Consumption

How to spell consumption

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce consumption

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does consumption mean?

1. nounThe act of using up a resource, or the amount of something that is used or eaten.
2. nounThe purchase and use of goods and services by households, viewed as a driver of an economy.

Consumption in a sentence

• The new boiler cut our household energy consumption by a third.

• Consumer consumption accounts for most of the country's economic growth.

• The report tracks annual fuel consumption across the entire fleet.

• The tax cut was designed to boost consumption during the slow quarter.

Where does consumption come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin consumere, which meant 'to use up, eat, devour, or waste away completely'. It was built from the prefix con-, here acting as an intensifier meaning 'completely', and sumere, 'to take up' (itself from sub 'up' and emere 'to take or buy'). The noun form passed through Old French as consumpcion before settling into English in the late 1300s. For centuries it carried a grim second life as the common name for tuberculosis, the disease that seemed to 'consume' the body from within, wasting it away. A useful spelling clue lives in the Latin past participle sumptus: that buried 'p' is exactly why the word is consumPtion rather than the simpler-looking 'consumtion'.

How the word is built

• con- (intensive: completely)
• sumpt- (from Latin sumere, sumptus: to take up, use up)
• -ion (noun suffix)