Elementary

How to spell elementary

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce elementary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does elementary mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the simplest, most basic aspects of a subject; introductory.
2. adjectiveRelating to the first years of formal schooling for young children, as in an American elementary school.

Elementary in a sentence

• The course covers only elementary accounting before moving on.

• She teaches at the local elementary school across town.

• A grasp of elementary grammar makes the report far easier to edit.

• Their daughter starts elementary school in the autumn.

Where does elementary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin elementarius, meaning 'belonging to the rudiments' or 'concerning the basics', which was built on elementum, a noun the Romans used for the simplest components of something: the basic substances of the physical world, or the letters that make up writing. Latin scholars even applied elementum to the ABC of learning, the very first things a student had to master, and that idea of 'the starting point' carried straight into the modern sense. English took the word in during the 1500s, at first describing the four classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water, and then settling on the meaning 'introductory' or 'basic'. The spelling trap lives in the middle: it is element followed by -ary, so the unstressed vowels can tempt writers toward 'elementry' or 'elementery'. Remembering the familiar word element sitting whole inside it is the surest guard against dropping that crucial 'a'.

How the word is built

• element (from Latin elementum: a first principle, rudiment)
• -ary (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to')