Class

How to spell class

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce class

What does class mean?

1. nounA group of students taught together, or a single scheduled lesson.
2. nounA category or grade of people or things sharing a common quality.
3. nounA division of society based on social or economic status.
4. verbTo assign someone or something to a category.

Class in a sentence

• noun

  The whole class stayed behind to finish the experiment.

• noun

  This hotel sits in a higher class than the others nearby.

• noun

  The survey looked at how income shapes social class in the city.

• verb

  The tax office will class the payment as taxable income.

• noun

  Her first class of the day starts at nine in the morning.

• noun

  The airline upgraded her to business class on the long flight.

Where does class come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin classis, which originally named one of the divisions into which the Roman state ranked its citizens for military and tax purposes, so it carried the idea of a graded group from the very beginning. English borrowed it in the late 1500s, at first to describe a division of students taught together and a category or rank of things in general. From the sense of a social rank came the modern notion of social class, and from the schoolroom sense came the everyday meaning of a lesson or group of learners. By the 1800s the word had also picked up an informal sense of stylish quality or distinction, as in someone having 'real class'. The spelling is refreshingly straightforward: a single consonant cluster at the front and the doubled s at the end mirror the original Latin classis.

How the word is built

• class (from Latin classis: a group or division of citizens)