Decorate

How to spell decorate

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce decorate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does decorate mean?

1. verbTo make something more attractive by adding ornaments, colour, or finishing touches.
2. verbTo formally confer a medal or award on someone as a mark of honour.

Decorate in a sentence

• They planned to decorate the nursery before the baby arrived.

• The general arrived to decorate the soldiers for their bravery.

• Volunteers will decorate the hall with banners for the reunion.

• The city chose to decorate the firefighter who saved the family.

Where does decorate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb decorare, meaning 'to adorn' or 'to beautify', which was built on the noun decus (with stem decor-) meaning 'ornament, grace, or honour'. The underlying idea was that of fitting beauty, of something seemly and becoming, and that same root gives us the words 'decor', 'decorous', and 'decoration'. English took the word up in the early 1500s, first in the sense of making something more beautiful by adding ornament, and the related military sense of pinning an honour on a soldier grew from the idea of adorning a person with a mark of distinction. The spelling stays close to the Latin, with the single 'c' and the unstressed second 'o' that quietly slides to a schwa sound; that faint middle vowel is the part writers most often have to think about. Knowing the kinship with 'decor' helps fix the order of letters in the stem.

How the word is built

• decor- (from Latin decus/decor: grace, ornament)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)