Dissatisfied

How to spell dissatisfied

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce dissatisfied

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dissatisfied mean?

1. adjectiveNot content or pleased; feeling that something has fallen short of what was expected or wanted.

Dissatisfied in a sentence

• Many customers were dissatisfied with the slow refund process.

• She felt deeply dissatisfied in a job that never challenged her.

Where does dissatisfied come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from the prefix dis-, meaning 'not' or expressing reversal, attached to 'satisfied', which descends ultimately from the Latin satisfacere, 'to satisfy'. That Latin verb combined satis, meaning 'enough', with facere, 'to make' or 'to do', so to satisfy something was literally to make enough of it, to meet a demand fully. The verb 'satisfy' came into English through Old French satisfier in the 1400s, and the adjective 'satisfied' followed naturally. By the early 1600s English writers were prefixing dis- to express the opposite state, that of having one's expectations or desires left unmet. The spelling trap lives right at the seam: the prefix already ends in s and the next syllable begins with s, so the word genuinely needs a double s, even though only one is heard when spoken aloud.

How the word is built

• dis- (not, reversal)
• satis (enough)
• fy (root from facere: to make)
• -ed (past participle/adjective)