Detail

How to spell detail

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce detail

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does detail mean?

1. nounA small individual part or feature of something, especially one of many making up a whole.
2. verbTo describe or list something fully and precisely, item by item.

Detail in a sentence

• noun

  The contract failed because of one overlooked detail in the payment terms.

• verb

  The report will detail every expense from the past financial year.

• noun

  She remembered every detail of the journey, down to the bus number.

• verb

  Please detail the steps you took before the system crashed.

Where does detail come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from the French détail, a noun built on the verb détailler, which literally meant 'to cut into pieces'. That verb joined the prefix de- (here in an intensifying sense, 'completely') with tailler, 'to cut', a word that itself goes back to the Late Latin taliare, 'to split or cut'. The idea of cutting something into small parts naturally produced the sense of examining a thing piece by piece, and so a 'detail' became one of the small particulars that make up a whole. English borrowed the term in the early 1600s, at first in this sense of itemised parts, and later for the painstaking precision implied by 'in detail'. The same tailler root also sits inside the everyday words 'tailor' (one who cuts cloth) and 'retail' (selling goods cut into small lots), which is a useful reminder of the buried 'cut' at the heart of the spelling.

How the word is built

• de- (apart, completely)
• tail (from French tailler 'to cut')