Cohesion

How to spell cohesion

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce cohesion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cohesion mean?

1. nounThe state of forming a united, well-connected whole, as a group, team, or piece of writing.
2. nounThe force of attraction by which the molecules of a single substance hold together.

Cohesion in a sentence

• The manager worked hard to build team cohesion before the busy season.

• Surface tension on water is caused by the strong cohesion between its molecules.

• The essay lacked cohesion, jumping between unrelated points without clear links.

• The lab report measured the cohesion that keeps droplets of mercury rounded.

Where does cohesion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb cohaerere, meaning 'to stick together' or 'to cling as one', formed from the prefix co- 'together' and the verb haerere 'to cling, stick, or adhere'. From the past participle stem came the noun of action that English adopted in the early 1600s, first in scientific writing to describe how the particles of a substance hold to one another. The figurative sense, the social or logical 'sticking together' of a group or an argument, grew naturally from that physical image. The same haerere root sits inside the close relatives 'adhesion', 'inherent', and even 'hesitate', which literally pictured someone 'stuck' and unable to move. A useful spelling cue is that family: cohesion shares its -hes- with adhesion, so the single s before -ion is the trap, not a double letter.

How the word is built

• co- (together)
• hes (from Latin haerere, to stick or cling)
• -ion (noun suffix)