Cassette

How to spell cassette

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cassette

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cassette mean?

1. nounA small sealed plastic case containing magnetic tape for recording or playing sound or video.

Cassette in a sentence

• He found an old audio cassette of his grandfather telling stories.

• The rental shop still stocked films on video cassette in the late nineties.

Where does cassette come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the French cassette, a diminutive of casse, meaning 'case' or 'box', so it literally meant 'a little case'. That casse traces back to the Latin capsa, the word for a chest or box for holding things, which is also the source of English 'case' and 'capsule'. French used cassette for centuries to mean a small ornamental casket or jewel box. English picked up that older sense in the 1500s, but the word exploded into everyday use in the 1960s when audio and film were sealed into small plastic cartridges and sold as 'cassettes'. The doubled ss and the French -ette ending (the spelling trap) are exactly what mark it as a borrowing rather than a native English word.

How the word is built

• cass- (from French casse: case/box)
• -ette (diminutive suffix: little)