Decide

How to spell decide

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce decide

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does decide mean?

1. verbTo reach a conclusion or make a firm choice after considering the options.

Decide in a sentence

• The committee will decide on the new budget next week.

• They could not decide which house to buy.

Where does decide come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb decidere, which literally meant 'to cut off' or 'to cut away', formed from de- meaning 'off' and caedere meaning 'to cut'. The image behind it is a vivid one: to decide something is to cut away all the other possibilities until a single choice remains. From the sense of cutting things off, the Latin verb came to mean 'to settle a dispute' or 'to determine an outcome', and it travelled into English through Old French decider in the late 1300s. The same caedere root that gives us the '-cide' ending here also lurks in words like 'concise', 'incision', and even 'homicide', all of which carry that core notion of cutting. Because the word is spelled with a soft c before i, the most common spelling slip is simply the ordinary c-versus-s confusion in the middle.

How the word is built

• de- (off, away)
• -cide (from Latin caedere: to cut)