Articles

How to spell articles

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce articles

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does articles mean?

1. nounPieces of writing on a particular subject, published in a newspaper, magazine, or journal.
2. nounParticular items or objects, especially ones of a specified kind.
3. nounThe grammatical words 'a', 'an', and 'the' that introduce a noun.

Articles in a sentence

• She writes weekly articles for the financial pages.

• The shop sells various household articles at a discount.

• The lesson explained how definite and indefinite articles work in English.

• The magazine published several articles about remote working.

• Please leave personal articles in the locker provided.

• Many languages do not use articles before nouns.

Where does articles come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin articulus, a diminutive of artus, which literally meant 'a joint' or 'a small connecting part', the place where two things are jointed together. From the idea of a small joint or division, articulus came to mean a separate clause or item in a document, a distinct part of a whole. English took the word through Old French in the 1200s, first for the separate clauses of a treaty or creed, then later for a single written composition and for any individual item or object. The same root gives us 'articulate', meaning to join words clearly, and 'joint' itself is a distant cousin. The spelling preserves the Latin -icle ending (a 'little' suffix), which is why it is articles and not 'articals', the unstressed second vowel being the usual trap.

How the word is built

• art (from artus: joint, connection)
• -icle (diminutive: little thing)
• -s (plural)