Enlighten

How to spell enlighten

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce enlighten

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does enlighten mean?

1. verbTo give someone greater knowledge or understanding about a subject or situation.

Enlighten in a sentence

• The manager held a short briefing to enlighten the team about the new policy.

• A good documentary can enlighten viewers about events they barely understood.

Where does enlighten come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word built from familiar Germanic parts rather than borrowed whole from another language. The core is the Old English leoht, meaning 'brightness' or 'illumination', the same root that gives us the everyday word 'light'. To this English added the prefix en-, which carries the sense of 'to put into' or 'to cause to be', and the verb-forming ending -en seen in words like 'strengthen' and 'brighten'. The literal idea, then, is 'to fill with light', and from late Middle English onward that physical brightness was extended into a metaphor for knowledge and understanding, so that to enlighten someone became to free them from ignorance. The spelling trap is the silent gh in 'light', a fossil of an Old English consonant sound that English stopped pronouncing but never stopped writing.

How the word is built

• en- (to make, to cause)
• light (Old English leoht: brightness, illumination)
• -en (verb-forming suffix)