Discharge

How to spell discharge

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce discharge

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does discharge mean?

1. verbTo release someone from a duty or institution, to pay off an obligation, or to send out a substance or charge.
2. nounThe act of releasing or emitting something, or the substance, fluid, or release itself.

Discharge in a sentence

• verb

  The hospital agreed to discharge him once his fever subsided.

• noun

  Engineers measured the discharge of water from the reservoir every hour.

• verb

  The factory must not discharge untreated waste into the river.

• noun

  His discharge from the navy came with a generous pension.

Where does discharge come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from the Old French descharger, meaning 'to unload' or 'to relieve of a burden', which was built from the prefix des- (expressing removal or reversal) and chargier 'to load'. That verb chargier traces back to the Late Latin carricare 'to load a wagon', which itself grew from carrus, the Latin word for a wheeled cart or wagon. So at its root, to discharge something was literally to take the load off it, and from that physical image English drew a whole family of figurative uses: releasing a soldier from duty, paying off a debt, firing a weapon, and letting fluid flow out. English adopted the word in the 1300s, and the same carrus root still rides inside 'car', 'cargo', and 'carry'. The trap in spelling is the quiet 'dis-' prefix sitting in front of the very ordinary word 'charge'.

How the word is built

• dis- (away, off, reversal)
• charge (from Old French charger: to load)