Construction

How to spell construction

12 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce construction

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does construction mean?

1. nounThe act or process of building something, or the industry that does this.
2. nounThe way in which something, especially words or actions, is interpreted or understood.

Construction in a sentence

• The new bridge is still under construction and will open next spring.

• The lawyer placed a very different construction on the wording of the contract.

• He found a steady job in the construction industry after leaving school.

• That careless remark was open to more than one construction.

Where does construction come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin constructio, meaning 'a putting together' or 'building', which was formed from the verb construere, 'to heap up, build, or assemble'. That verb joins con-, meaning 'together', with struere, 'to pile up or arrange', the same root that gives us 'structure', 'instruct', and 'destroy'. English took the word in through Old French during the late Middle Ages, and by the 1400s it was used both for the physical act of building and for the way words are arranged in a sentence. The figurative sense of how something is interpreted, as in placing a 'construction' on someone's remarks, grew out of the idea of how parts are fitted together. The spelling is reassuringly regular: the trap, if any, is simply remembering the -tion ending rather than -sion, which the soft pronunciation can disguise.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• struct (from struere: to pile up, build)
• -ion (noun of action)