Competitive

How to spell competitive

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce competitive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does competitive mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or characterised by rivalry; eager to win or to do better than others.

Competitive in a sentence

• The firm offers a competitive salary to attract skilled engineers.

• She has always been intensely competitive about her exam results.

Where does competitive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb competere, which combined com- 'together' with petere 'to seek, to strive, or to aim for'; quite literally it meant 'to seek together' or 'to strive alongside one another'. In late Latin the sense narrowed toward rivalry, where people seeking the same prize were necessarily set against each other. English took the related noun 'competition' first, and the adjective 'competitive' followed in the seventeenth century to describe anything involving or suited to rivalry. The same petere root still drives a surprising family of English words, including 'petition' (a formal seeking), 'appetite' (a seeking toward something), and 'repeat' (to seek again). The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the schwa vowels in com-PET-i-tive tempt writers toward 'competative' or 'competetive', when the steady e and i pattern is the form to remember.

How the word is built

• com- (together)
• pet (to seek/strive, from petere)
• -itive (adjective suffix)