Cooperation

How to spell cooperation

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce cooperation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cooperation mean?

1. nounThe act of working together towards a shared goal or for mutual benefit.

Cooperation in a sentence

• The project succeeded thanks to close cooperation between the two departments.

• Police thanked the public for their cooperation during the investigation.

Where does cooperation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb cooperari, meaning 'to work together', which was formed from the prefix co- (a form of cum, meaning 'with' or 'together') and operari, 'to work', itself built on opus, 'a work' or 'a task'. The Late Latin noun cooperatio described the act of joint labour, and English took the term in during the late 1400s, partly through French. The same operari root still powers a whole family of everyday words such as 'operate', 'operation', and 'cooperative'. A useful spelling anchor is that this is simply 'operation' with 'co' fastened to the front, so the two o's that meet in the middle (co + operation) are both genuinely there. Modern English dropped the older diaeresis (coöperation) and the hyphen, leaving the plain run of letters that can look odd but is correct.

How the word is built

• co- (together, with)
• oper (from operari: to work)
• -ation (noun of action)