Donate

How to spell donate

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce donate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does donate mean?

1. verbTo give something, especially money or goods, to a charity, cause, or organisation without expecting payment.

Donate in a sentence

• Many readers offered to donate books to the local library.

• The company agreed to donate a portion of its profits to flood relief.

Where does donate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb donare, which simply meant 'to give as a gift', built on the noun donum, meaning 'a gift' or 'present'. That noun in turn rests on the very old root that also gives us the Latin dare, 'to give'. Interestingly, donate came into English in a slightly roundabout way: rather than being borrowed directly in the medieval period, it was formed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a back-formation from the older noun 'donation', which had been in English since the fifteenth century by way of Old French. Because the verb was reverse-engineered from the noun, it kept the tidy don- spelling and the familiar -ate ending you see in many Latin-derived verbs. The same donum root still shows up in 'donor', 'condone', and the legal term 'donee', all sharing that core idea of giving.

How the word is built

• don- (from Latin donare/donum: to give, a gift)
• -ate (verb suffix)