Discusses

How to spell discusses

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce discusses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does discusses mean?

1. verbTalks about or examines a topic in detail, especially considering different points of view.

Discusses in a sentence

• The final chapter discusses the long-term effects of the policy.

• The committee discusses the budget at every monthly meeting.

Where does discusses come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the third-person singular form of the verb 'discuss', which traces back to the Latin discutere, literally meaning 'to shake apart' or 'to dash to pieces', built from dis- 'apart' and quatere 'to shake'. In classical Latin it carried the very physical sense of scattering or breaking something up, but by late and medieval Latin the past participle discussus had drifted toward the figurative idea of 'examining' or 'investigating', as if one were shaking an issue apart to inspect its pieces. English took the word in during the 1300s, at first meaning to disperse or dispel, before it settled into the modern sense of talking something through. The same quatere root survives in relatives like 'concussion' and 'percussion', words that keep the original sense of shaking or striking. The spelling trap is the doubled letters: the single 's' of dis- meets the 'cuss' that already carries its own 's' sounds, and adding -es produces the cluster that trips writers up.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart)
• cuss (from Latin quatere/discutere: to shake, strike)
• -es (third-person singular present)