Electricity

How to spell electricity

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce electricity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does electricity mean?

1. nounA form of energy from charged particles, used to power lights, appliances, and machines.

Electricity in a sentence

• The storm cut off our electricity for three hours.

• Rising bills mean we try to use less electricity at home.

Where does electricity come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek elektron, which literally meant 'amber', the fossilised tree resin that the ancient Greeks noticed could attract dust and feathers after being rubbed with cloth. Around the year 1600 the English physician William Gilbert latinised this into electricus to describe that very property of attraction, and from his term the noun electricity was coined by Sir Thomas Browne in 1646 to name the force itself. Only later, as scientists understood the flow of charge, did the word take on its modern meaning of the power that lights our homes. The amber connection is a useful spelling anchor: the word begins electr-, never 'elect-', and the tricky stretch is the unstressed '-icity' ending, which simply stacks the adjective ending -ic onto the noun ending -ity. The same elektron root also gives us 'electron', the charged particle at the heart of the phenomenon.

How the word is built

• electr- (from Greek elektron: amber)
• -ic (adjective suffix)
• -ity (noun suffix)