Depot

How to spell depot

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce depot

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does depot mean?

1. nounA building or yard where goods, equipment, or vehicles are stored or serviced.
2. nounA railway or bus station, especially a smaller one (chiefly North American usage).

Depot in a sentence

• The buses return to the depot at the end of each shift.

• The old train depot downtown has been turned into a museum.

• Spare parts are held in a central depot near the warehouse district.

• She waited at the bus depot for the early morning service.

Where does depot come from?

Language of origin: French

Depot came into English in the early 1700s straight from French depot (originally written with a circumflex, depot), which meant a deposit or a place where things are laid down for safekeeping. The French word grew out of the Latin depositum, the noun of deponere, meaning to put down or lay aside, formed from de meaning down and ponere meaning to place or put. English first used it in a military sense for a store of supplies or a base where recruits were gathered, and it later widened to mean any place where goods or vehicles are kept. The very same ponere root sits inside familiar words like deposit, position, and component, which is a useful reminder that the buried p belongs to a place-and-put family. The silent final t and the single p (not a doubled one) are the spelling traps, both inherited directly from the original French form.

How the word is built

• de- (down)
• pos/pot (from Latin ponere, to place)
• silent French -t ending