Disclosure

How to spell disclosure

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disclosure

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disclosure mean?

1. nounThe act of making previously hidden or confidential information known.

Disclosure in a sentence

• The contract requires full disclosure of any financial interests.

• The company faced fines for failing to make a timely disclosure to investors.

Where does disclosure come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Disclosure traces back to the Latin verb claudere, meaning 'to close' or 'to shut', the same root that gives us 'close', 'enclose', and 'conclude'. In medieval Latin a prefixed form with dis- carried the reverse idea, 'to open up' or 'to unshut', which passed into Old French as desclore. English borrowed the verb 'disclose' in the late 1300s with the literal sense of opening something, soon shifting to the figurative meaning of revealing facts or secrets that had been kept shut away. The noun 'disclosure' was then formed in English during the 1500s, modelled on the pattern of words like 'closure' and 'exposure'. That -sure ending, rather than the -ce or -tion a writer might expect, is the spelling trap, and it makes sense once you remember the word is built on 'close', whose s sound is preserved.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart, reversing)
• clos (from Latin claudere: to close, shut)
• -ure (noun-forming suffix)