Display
verbTo put something where it can be clearly seen, or to show a quality or feeling openly.
How to spell display
7 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce display
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does display mean?
- verbTo put something where it can be clearly seen, or to show a quality or feeling openly.
- nounAn arrangement of things shown to the public, or a screen that shows information.
Display in a sentence
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verb
The museum will display the new artefacts in the main hall.
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noun
The shop window had an elaborate festive display this year.
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verb
Good managers display patience when a project runs late.
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noun
The new phone has a brighter display than the old model.
Where does display come from?
Language of origin: Latin
This word comes ultimately from the Latin displicare, which combined dis- meaning 'apart' with plicare meaning 'to fold', so its literal sense was 'to unfold' or 'to spread out'. It travelled into English through the Old French despleier, used of unfolding cloth or unfurling a banner, and entered Middle English in the 1300s. From the idea of unfurling something so that it could be seen, the meaning broadened to 'show, exhibit, make visible', which is the dominant sense today. The same plicare root, 'to fold', sits behind a surprising family of English words including 'deploy', 'reply', 'pliable' and 'complicate', and 'deploy' in particular is a close cousin since it too began as the unfolding of troops. The spelling keeps the single -play ending rather than any -ay variant, a clue to its 'unfolding' ancestry.
How the word is built
- dis- (apart)
- play (from Latin plicare, to fold) = literally 'to unfold'
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