Discussion

How to spell discussion

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce discussion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does discussion mean?

1. nounThe act of talking over a subject in order to reach an understanding or decision.

Discussion in a sentence

• The budget needs further discussion before the board can vote.

• After a long discussion with her manager, she accepted the new role.

Where does discussion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb discutere, which literally meant 'to shake apart' or 'to dash to pieces', built from dis- 'apart' and quatere 'to shake'. Over time the Latin sense drifted from physically shaking something apart to the figurative idea of breaking a matter open for examination, and the noun discussionem came to mean an investigation or inquiry. English borrowed the word through Old French in the 1300s, at first carrying the legal flavour of examining a case, before settling into the modern meaning of talking a subject over. The shared quatere root still hides inside relatives such as 'concussion' (a shaking together) and 'percussion' (a striking through), which is a useful clue: that doubled -ss- in the middle echoes the same family, and remembering 'percussion' and 'concussion' helps fix the spelling of discussion.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart)
• cuss (from Latin quatere: to shake)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)