Emotion

How to spell emotion

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce emotion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emotion mean?

1. nounA strong feeling such as joy, anger, fear, or sadness.

Emotion in a sentence

• She struggled to hide the emotion in her voice during the speech.

• The therapist encouraged him to name each emotion as it arose.

Where does emotion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word emotion comes ultimately from the Latin verb movere, meaning 'to move', combined with the prefix e- (a form of ex-, meaning 'out'). The Latin emovere therefore literally meant 'to move out' or 'to stir up', and that physical sense of being moved gradually shifted toward the idea of being inwardly stirred or agitated. English borrowed it through the French emotion in the 1500s, where it first described a literal moving or migration, even a public disturbance or commotion. Only in the 1600s did it settle into its modern psychological meaning of a strong feeling that moves us. The shared mot root still surfaces in relatives like 'motion', 'motor', and 'commotion', and remembering that an emotion is something that 'moves' you can help fix the single m and the -ion ending.

How the word is built

• e- (out)
• mot (move, from movere)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)