Annum

How to spell annum

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce annum

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does annum mean?

1. nounA year, used almost exclusively in the phrase 'per annum' to mean for each year.

Annum in a sentence

• The salary works out to forty thousand pounds per annum.

• The lease sets the rent at twelve thousand per annum, paid in monthly instalments.

Where does annum come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from Latin annus, meaning 'year', and survives in English almost entirely inside the fixed phrase 'per annum', meaning 'by the year' or 'for each year'. The form 'annum' is the accusative case that Latin required after the preposition 'per', which is why the word keeps its original ending rather than becoming an everyday English noun. The same annus root sits inside many familiar words: 'annual' for something that happens yearly, 'anniversary' for a yearly return of a date, and 'biennial' for something occurring every two years. English adopted the phrase wholesale for accounting and legal use from around the 1500s and 1600s, when Latin still dominated formal record keeping. Because it stays close to its Latin shape, the spelling trap is simply the doubled n and the unfamiliar -um ending, which writers sometimes reduce to a single n or alter to -em.

How the word is built

• ann- (from Latin annus: year)
• -um (Latin singular noun ending, the form used after the preposition per)