Affectionate

How to spell affectionate

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce affectionate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does affectionate mean?

1. adjectiveShowing or feeling fondness, warmth, and tenderness toward others.

Affectionate in a sentence

• Their grandmother was warm and affectionate with every visitor.

• The dog greeted him with an affectionate nudge against his leg.

Where does affectionate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb afficere, meaning 'to influence' or 'to act upon', which combined ad- ('to, toward') with facere ('to do or make'). From its past participle affectus came the noun affectio, describing a state of mind or a disposition produced in someone, literally a way one has been 'affected'. By the time English picked the family up through Old French, affection had narrowed to mean tender feeling or fondness, and the adjective affectionate appeared in the 1500s to describe a person full of such warmth. The spelling keeps the doubled consonant of the af- prefix and the -tion cluster from the Latin facere root, which is exactly where many writers stumble, doubling the wrong letters or forgetting the silent flow of -tion-ate. A useful memory hook is that affectionate shares its deep root with 'fact', 'effect' and 'manufacture', all built on the same idea of doing or making.

How the word is built

• af- (variant of ad-, to/toward)
• fect (from facere: to do/make)
• -ion (state noun suffix)
• -ate (adjective suffix)