Citation

How to spell citation

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce citation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does citation mean?

1. nounA reference to a source of information, typically quoted or listed to support an academic argument.
2. nounAn official notice ordering someone to appear in court or stating they have broken a regulation, such as a traffic offence.
3. nounA formal public commendation honouring an act of bravery or notable achievement.

Citation in a sentence

• Each citation in the essay must include the author and the year of publication.

• The officer wrote him a citation for parking in a loading zone.

• The soldier was awarded a citation for rescuing two colleagues under fire.

• The marker deducted points because one quotation lacked a proper citation.

• The restaurant received a citation for failing the health inspection.

• Her years of volunteer work earned her a citation from the mayor.

Where does citation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb citare, meaning 'to summon, set in motion, or call forth', which was itself a frequentative of ciere, 'to rouse or stir up'. From citare came the noun citatio, describing the act of summoning someone, particularly to appear before a court. English took the word in through Old French as 'citation' during the late 1300s, when it carried the legal sense of a formal summons. Over time the idea of 'calling forth' broadened: just as you summon a person to court, a writer summons a passage of text as evidence, and so by the 1500s 'citation' came to mean quoting an authority in support of an argument. The very same citare root still powers the everyday verb 'cite' and the legal term 'recite', and remembering 'cite' helps fix the single c and the cit- spelling rather than the tempting 'sit-'.

How the word is built

• cit- (from Latin citare: to summon, call, cite)
• -ation (noun suffix meaning the act or result of)