Compute

How to spell compute

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce compute

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does compute mean?

1. verbTo work out a result or amount by mathematical calculation.

Compute in a sentence

• The software can compute the monthly interest in seconds.

• She used a spreadsheet to compute the total cost of the project.

Where does compute come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Compute comes from the Latin verb computare, which meant to count up, to reckon, or to calculate a total. It was built from the prefix com-, meaning together, joined to putare, a verb that literally meant to prune or trim and from there came to mean to settle an account or to think something through. English took the word directly from Latin in the seventeenth century for the act of calculating numbers. The same Latin root branched off into French and gave English the word count, so compute and count are distant cousins from one ancestor. The everyday noun computer began simply as a name for a person who computes, long before it meant a machine, and the spelling stays regular: keep the single m, the single t, and the silent final e.

How the word is built

• com- (together)
• put (from Latin putare: to reckon, to settle an account)
• -e