Belt

How to spell belt

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce belt

What does belt mean?

1. nounA strip of leather or fabric worn around the waist to hold up clothing or carry items.
2. nounA broad strip or zone of land, weather, or activity that shares a common feature.
3. verbTo hit something or someone forcefully, often in informal speech.

Belt in a sentence

• noun

  He tightened his belt a notch after losing weight.

• noun

  The factory closed during the long decline of the rust belt.

• verb

  He would belt the ball clean over the fence every practice.

• noun

  The new trousers came with a matching leather belt.

• noun

  A belt of heavy rain swept across the coast overnight.

• verb

  The boxer threatened to belt his opponent in the next round.

Where does belt come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Belt is one of the older words in English, recorded in Old English as belt with the same basic meaning of a band worn around the body. The Anglo-Saxons did not coin it from scratch, however: it was an early Germanic borrowing from the Latin balteus, which meant a girdle or the strap from which a sword was hung. Roman soldiers wore the balteus as a mark of their service, so the word carried a sense of equipment and readiness from the very start. Over the centuries the meaning broadened well beyond clothing, giving us a 'belt' of land or weather, a mechanical drive 'belt' in an engine, and the informal verb meaning to strike hard. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, the spelling has stayed remarkably stable and gives modern writers very little trouble.

How the word is built

• belt (single root, no affixes; from Old English belt)