Evolution

How to spell evolution

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce evolution

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does evolution mean?

1. nounThe process by which living things or ideas change and develop gradually over a long period.

Evolution in a sentence

• The museum traces the evolution of early human tools.

• Biology students study the evolution of species over millions of years.

Where does evolution come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin evolutio, the action noun built on evolvere, which literally meant 'to roll out' or 'to unroll'. The root verb volvere, 'to roll', is the same one that sits inside 'revolve', 'voluble', and 'volume', the last of which originally meant a rolled-up scroll. For the Romans, evolvere often described unrolling a scroll to read it, so the early sense was bound up with unfolding or laying something open. English took the word in the 1600s, first in mathematical and military senses of unrolling or deploying, and later for any gradual process of development. Charles Darwin's nineteenth-century work fixed the dominant modern meaning, the slow biological change of species over time, though the word still carries its older sense of any steady unfolding. The single -l- and the -tion ending are the usual traps, since the spelling preserves the Latin volut rather than any doubled letters.

How the word is built

• e- (variant of ex-: out)
• volut (from volvere: to roll)
• -ion (noun suffix: act or process of)