Creativity

How to spell creativity

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce creativity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does creativity mean?

1. nounThe ability to produce original ideas or to use the imagination to make something new.

Creativity in a sentence

• The design team is valued for its creativity and fresh thinking.

• A quiet morning routine seems to boost her creativity at work.

Where does creativity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb creare, which meant 'to make', 'to bring forth', or 'to produce', and which also gave us 'create' and 'creature'. From the past participle creatus came an adjective sense of being able to produce something, and English formed 'creative' in the 1600s to describe the power of making. The abstract noun 'creativity', meaning the quality of having original ideas, is surprisingly modern: it only became common in the twentieth century, especially after the 1950s when psychologists began studying it as a measurable human trait. The spelling stacks two suffixes onto the root, so the trap is the unstressed middle: writers must keep the '-ive-' before the '-ity', producing the smooth '-ivity' ending rather than dropping a letter. Knowing that 'creative' sits whole inside 'creativity' makes the spelling easy to reconstruct.

How the word is built

• creat- (from creare: to make, produce)
• -ive (adjective suffix: tending to)
• -ity (noun suffix: quality or state of)