Dialogue

How to spell dialogue

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dialogue

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dialogue mean?

1. nounA conversation or exchange of ideas, especially between two or more people in a written work or formal discussion.
2. verbTo take part in a discussion or exchange of views, especially to resolve a disagreement.

Dialogue in a sentence

• noun

  The screenwriter spent weeks polishing the dialogue between the two detectives.

• verb

  The two governments agreed to dialogue over the disputed border.

• noun

  The union and management finally opened a dialogue about pay.

• verb

  Managers were encouraged to dialogue openly with their teams.

Where does dialogue come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek dialogos, a conversation or discourse, formed from dia, meaning 'across' or 'between', and the verb legein, 'to speak'. The literal sense was therefore a speaking back and forth between people, an exchange rather than a single voice. The Greeks gave the form real prestige through the philosophical dialogues of Plato, in which ideas are developed by characters talking in turn. Latin took it up as dialogus, and it passed into English in the thirteenth century by way of Old French dialoge. The final -gue spelling, like that in catalogue and synonyms ending the same way, comes through the French route and is exactly the trap for modern writers, since the word ends in a sounded 'g' but carries a silent 'ue' after it. The shared logos root still links it to logic, monologue, and the many sciences ending in -ology.

How the word is built

• dia- (across, between)
• log (from Greek logos: speech, word)
• -ue (spelling ending preserved from French)

British and American spelling

Dialogue is the British spelling. American English spells it dialog.