Benchmark

How to spell benchmark

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce benchmark

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does benchmark mean?

1. nounA standard or point of reference against which things can be measured or compared.
2. verbTo evaluate or measure something by comparing it against a recognised standard.

Benchmark in a sentence

• noun

  The report set a clear benchmark for customer satisfaction.

• verb

  The team will benchmark their costs against rival firms.

• noun

  Sales this quarter fell below the industry benchmark.

• verb

  Managers regularly benchmark pay rates across the sector.

Where does benchmark come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Benchmark is a compound of two very old native English words, bench and mark, both descending from Old English: benc, a long seat or ledge, and mearc, a sign, boundary, or measure. The term began as a literal surveying word in the early 1800s, when a surveyor would cut a horizontal notch, a 'bench', into a wall or stone and then set a bracket (an angle-iron) into it to hold the levelling staff steady at a known height. That fixed reference point, the 'bench mark', let surveyors measure elevations consistently from one survey to the next. From this physical sense of a reliable fixed reference, the word broadened during the twentieth century into a figurative standard against which things are judged, and later into computing, where it names a test that measures performance. Because both halves are plain everyday words, the only spelling trap is remembering that it is written as one solid word with no space or hyphen.

How the word is built

• bench (a long seat; here a surveyor's notched ledge)
• mark (a sign or measure)