Demolition

How to spell demolition

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce demolition

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does demolition mean?

1. nounThe deliberate destruction or pulling down of a building or other structure.

Demolition in a sentence

• The council approved the demolition of the derelict factory.

• Residents protested the demolition of the old town hall.

Where does demolition come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb demoliri, which meant to throw or pull down, formed from de- meaning 'down' and moliri meaning 'to build up' or 'to construct'. That second part came from moles, a Latin noun for a great mass or massive structure, the same root that gives us 'mole' in the sense of a stone breakwater and the word 'molecule'. So demolition is literally the undoing of building, the pulling apart of a mass that was raised up. English took the noun in through French during the sixteenth century, and it settled firmly into the language of construction and warfare. The spelling trap sits in that unstressed middle: writers hear 'demolish' and can drift toward spellings like 'demolision', but the standard ending is the Latin-derived -ition, matching related nouns such as 'abolition' and 'composition'.

How the word is built

• de- (down, away)
• mol- (from Latin moliri, to build, itself from moles, a mass or huge structure)
• -ition (noun-forming suffix)