Emphasis

How to spell emphasis

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce emphasis

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does emphasis mean?

1. nounSpecial importance, force, or prominence given to something in speaking, writing, or action.

Emphasis in a sentence

• The training course places great emphasis on workplace safety.

• Her report shifted the emphasis from cost to quality.

Where does emphasis come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Emphasis comes from the Greek word emphasis, which originally meant an appearance or a showing forth, built from the prefix en- 'in' and the verb phainein 'to show' or 'to make appear'. In Greek rhetoric it described a way of hinting at more than the words literally said, a kind of meaningful suggestion lurking beneath the surface. Latin borrowed the term as emphasis, keeping the rhetorical sense, and English took it up in the late sixteenth century to mean special force given to a word or idea. The same phainein root that gives us the 'phas' middle also underlies words such as 'phenomenon' and 'phase', all sharing the notion of something coming into view. The spelling trap is the 'ph' standing for an f sound and the two unstressed schwa vowels in '-asis', which tempt writers toward 'emphesis' or 'emphisis'.

How the word is built

• em- (en-, in/within)
• phas (showing, from phainein 'to show')
• -is (Greek noun suffix)