Exercise

How to spell exercise

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce exercise

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exercise mean?

1. nounActivity carried out to improve or maintain physical fitness or health.
2. nounA task or set of problems designed to practise or test a particular skill.
3. verbTo put a power, right, or faculty into use, or to engage in physical activity.

Exercise in a sentence

• noun

  The doctor recommended thirty minutes of exercise each day.

• noun

  The textbook ends each chapter with a written exercise to reinforce the lesson.

• verb

  Voters can exercise their right to a postal ballot before election day.

• noun

  Regular exercise helped her sleep better and lower her blood pressure.

• noun

  The team ran a fire drill as a safety exercise on Friday morning.

• verb

  Managers should exercise caution when approving large refunds.

Where does exercise come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word travelled into English in the 1300s from the Old French exercice, which came directly from the Latin noun exercitium, meaning 'training' or 'practice'. That noun grew from the verb exercere, which literally meant 'to drive out' or 'to keep busy', built from ex- 'out, thoroughly' and arcere 'to keep in, confine, restrain'. The original sense was agricultural and military: to keep animals or soldiers constantly working so they stayed fit and disciplined. From that idea of regular, deliberate practice came both the physical sense (training the body) and the abstract sense (the careful use of a power or right). A useful spelling note: exercise is one of the words that always ends in -ise, never -ize, in every dialect, so the c-then-s pattern (ex-er-c-ise) is the steady trap to remember.

How the word is built

• ex- (out, thoroughly)
• -erc- (from Latin arcere: to confine, keep in)
• -ise (verb/noun suffix)