Dissemination

How to spell dissemination

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce dissemination

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dissemination mean?

1. nounThe act of spreading or distributing information, knowledge, or material widely to many people.

Dissemination in a sentence

• The charity relies on rapid dissemination of safety advice during a flood.

• The journal funds the dissemination of research findings to clinicians across the country.

Where does dissemination come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows directly out of agriculture. It comes from the Latin verb disseminare, which literally meant 'to scatter seed' or 'to sow widely', built from dis- 'abroad, in all directions' and seminare 'to sow', itself from semen, the Latin word for 'seed'. By the time it entered English in the early 1600s, the farming image had been carried over into the world of ideas: just as a sower flings seed broadcast across a field, a person can scatter news, knowledge, or doctrine widely so that it takes root in many minds. The same semen 'seed' root survives in the everyday word 'seminar', a place where ideas are sown, and in 'seminal', describing a work that plants influential ideas. Remembering the buried 'semin', the seed, helps explain the single s in the middle, which sits between the doubled s of dis- and is easy to miscount.

How the word is built

• dis- (abroad, in all directions)
• semin (seed, from Latin semen)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix)