Depletion

How to spell depletion

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce depletion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does depletion mean?

1. nounThe using up or reduction of something until little or none remains, especially a resource or supply.

Depletion in a sentence

• The rapid depletion of groundwater worried the local farmers.

• Years of overfishing led to the depletion of cod stocks.

Where does depletion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Depletion traces back to the Latin verb deplere, which meant 'to empty out' or 'to drain'. That verb was built from the prefix de-, carrying the sense of 'down' or 'away from', and the root plere, meaning 'to fill'; so to deplere something was literally to undo its fullness. The past participle depletus gave rise to the noun form, and English adopted the word in the early 1800s, at first largely in medicine, where bleeding a patient was said to deplete the body. The same plere root quietly fills a whole family of English words, including 'complete' (filled up), 'replete' (filled again) and 'supplement' (an extra filling), which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the -plet- core intact. Knowing that 'plet' comes from 'fill' helps fix the single l and the -tion ending, since the word is simply de + plet + ion rather than anything doubled.

How the word is built

• de- (down, away from)
• plet (from Latin plere: to fill)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)