Dehydration

How to spell dehydration

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce dehydration

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dehydration mean?

1. nounA harmful loss of water from the body or from a substance.

Dehydration in a sentence

• The hikers carried extra water to avoid dehydration in the desert heat.

• Severe dehydration can cause dizziness, headaches, and a racing pulse.

Where does dehydration come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is built from Greek roots dressed in a Latin prefix. At its core is the Greek hydor, meaning 'water', which gives English a whole family of terms about liquids and moisture, from 'hydrant' to 'hydraulic'. To that root was added the Latin prefix de-, meaning 'removal' or 'taking away', producing the idea of drawing water out of something. The verb 'dehydrate' and its noun 'dehydration' were coined in the scientific era, roughly the nineteenth century, as chemists and physiologists needed precise terms for removing water from compounds or from the body. The spelling trap lives in that hidden Greek 'y': writers expect an 'i' where 'hydr' actually carries a 'y', the same surprise found in 'hydrogen' and 'hydraulic'.

How the word is built

• de- (removal, taking away)
• hydr (water, from Greek hydor)
• -ation (noun of process)