Detect

How to spell detect

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce detect

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does detect mean?

1. verbTo discover or identify the presence of something, often something hidden or hard to perceive.

Detect in a sentence

• The new sensor can detect even a trace of smoke in the room.

• Auditors are trained to detect small discrepancies in the accounts.

Where does detect come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb detegere, which meant literally 'to uncover' or 'to lay bare', formed from the prefix de- in the sense of 'un-' or 'off' combined with tegere, meaning 'to cover'. To uncover something hidden naturally extended to the idea of discovering or revealing a thing that someone had tried to keep concealed, which is why detect today carries the flavour of catching out crimes, faults, and secrets. English took it on in the early 1400s, originally in the legal and moral sense of exposing wrongdoing. The same tegere root still hides inside the everyday word 'protect', which literally means 'to cover in front', as well as the medical term 'tegument' for a covering layer of skin. The spelling is mercifully phonetic, so the chief thing to remember is the hard -ct ending shared with relatives like 'protect' and 'inspect'.

How the word is built

• de- (un-, off)
• tect (from Latin tegere: to cover)