Exercises

How to spell exercises

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce exercises

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exercises mean?

1. nounActivities, drills, or set tasks done to improve fitness, skill, or understanding.
2. verbPuts a power, right, or influence into active use, or engages in physical activity.

Exercises in a sentence

• noun

  The physiotherapist recommended daily exercises for his lower back.

• verb

  The board exercises tight control over the company's spending each quarter.

• noun

  The textbook ends each chapter with grammar exercises to test the reader.

• verb

  She exercises at the gym before work most mornings.

Where does exercises come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb exercere, which literally meant 'to keep busy' or 'to drive on', formed from ex- 'thoroughly' and arcere 'to keep off, enclose, restrain'. The underlying image was of driving animals out of an enclosure to work them, and from there it came to mean training, practising, or putting effort into something. Latin exercitium, the noun for training or practice, passed into Old French as exercice and reached English in the 1300s, first in the sense of religious or moral discipline and later of physical activity and set tasks. The same arcere root that gives the spelling its tricky middle also underlies words like 'coerce'. A useful memory hook: the word keeps the -cise ending and is always spelled with an s, never a z, in every dialect, which catches writers who expect an -ize.

How the word is built

• ex- (thoroughly)
• erc (from Latin arcere: to enclose, restrain)
• -ise (verb suffix)
• -s (plural/3rd-person inflection)