Composite

How to spell composite

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce composite

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does composite mean?

1. adjectiveMade up of several distinct parts or materials combined into a whole.
2. nounSomething made by combining different parts, materials, or images into a single whole.

Composite in a sentence

• adjective

  The boat hull is built from a lightweight composite material.

• noun

  The artist built the final image as a composite of three separate photographs.

• adjective

  The report offered a composite picture drawn from many separate surveys.

• noun

  The witness helped the police produce a composite of the suspect's face.

Where does composite come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin compositus, the past participle of componere, which meant 'to put together' or 'to arrange'. That verb was built from com- 'together' and ponere 'to place or put', so a composite thing is literally something that has been 'placed together' from separate parts. English took it up in the fifteenth century, at first chiefly as an adjective for things assembled from distinct elements, and it later spread into architecture (the Composite order of columns), botany (the daisy family of composite flowers), and modern materials science (composite materials such as carbon fibre). The same ponere root sits inside a large family of relatives including compose, deposit, position, and opponent, which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the 'posit' chunk intact. Remembering it as com + posit guards against the common slip of writing it with a doubled or dropped letter.

How the word is built

• com- (together)
• posit (placed, from Latin ponere/positus 'to put')
• -e