Dispel

How to spell dispel

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dispel

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dispel mean?

1. verbTo drive away or eliminate something, especially a feeling, doubt, or false belief.

Dispel in a sentence

• The manager held a meeting to dispel the rumours about layoffs.

• A quick phone call from the bank helped dispel her worries about the missing payment.

Where does dispel come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin dispellere, which combined the prefix dis-, meaning 'away' or 'apart', with the verb pellere, meaning 'to drive' or 'to push'. The literal sense was therefore 'to drive apart' or 'to scatter in different directions', as one might scatter a crowd or a bank of cloud. English adopted it in the late 1300s, at first keeping the concrete idea of driving something physically away, before settling on the figurative meaning we use today: clearing away doubts, fears, myths, and other intangible things. The same pellere root drives a whole family of English relatives, including 'compel' (to drive together, to force), 'expel' (to drive out), 'repel' (to drive back), and 'propel' (to drive forward). Remembering that family is also the key to the spelling trap, because dispel ends in a single l, just like its cousins compel, expel and repel, not a doubled one.

How the word is built

• dis- (away, apart)
• pel (from Latin pellere: to drive)