Devise

How to spell devise

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce devise

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does devise mean?

1. verbTo plan, invent, or work out something by careful thought.
2. verbTo leave real property to someone in a will.

Devise in a sentence

• The team had to devise a faster way to process the refunds.

• In her will she chose to devise the family cottage to her niece.

• Engineers will devise a system to cool the overheating servers.

• The testator may devise the entire estate to a single heir.

Where does devise come from?

Language of origin: French

This word travelled into English from the Old French verb deviser, which carried a cluster of senses including to arrange, to plan, and to talk over. That French verb traces back through Vulgar Latin to the Latin dividere, meaning literally to divide or to separate into parts, since planning something often meant dividing it into ordered pieces. From the idea of arranging or apportioning came the modern sense of working something out by careful thought, and also the legal sense of apportioning property in a will. English adopted it in the 1200s, and for centuries it shared spellings and meanings with its noun cousin device before the two settled apart. The lasting spelling trap is precisely that split: the verb devise ends in -ise and is pronounced with a buzzing z, while the noun device ends in -ice with a hissing s, even though both descend from the same root.

How the word is built

• de- (apart)
• vise (from Latin -videre/dividere: to divide, distribute)