Evaporation

How to spell evaporation

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce evaporation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does evaporation mean?

1. nounThe process by which a liquid changes into a vapour and rises into the air.

Evaporation in a sentence

• The puddles vanished quickly through evaporation on the hot pavement.

• Salt is harvested by allowing seawater to disappear through evaporation.

Where does evaporation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb evaporare, which combined the prefix ex-, meaning 'out' or 'away', with vapor, the Latin word for 'steam', 'mist', or 'vapour'. Literally it described moisture going out as steam, the very process the modern word still names. The action noun evaporatio was formed from that verb to describe the process itself, and English absorbed it through Old French during the late 1300s, at first in alchemical and medical writing about heating liquids. The same vapor root sits inside everyday words such as 'vapour' and 'vaporise', which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps that single p and the a after the v. Because the word is built so neatly from a clear prefix, root, and suffix, it has stayed remarkably stable in form over six centuries.

How the word is built

• e- (out, from ex-)
• vapor (steam, vapour)
• -ation (noun of process)