Exhaustive

How to spell exhaustive

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce exhaustive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exhaustive mean?

1. adjectiveCovering every detail or possibility; fully comprehensive.

Exhaustive in a sentence

• The auditors carried out an exhaustive review of every transaction.

• Her report offered an exhaustive list of all the suppliers involved.

Where does exhaustive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb haurire, meaning 'to draw out' or 'to drain', and its past participle stem haust-. Adding the prefix ex-, meaning 'out' or 'completely', gave the sense of draining something entirely dry. English took the resulting stem and attached the adjective ending -ive in the seventeenth century, when 'exhaustive' first described something that used up or drained resources. From that literal idea of emptying a vessel, the meaning shifted to its modern sense: a treatment so complete that nothing is left out, as if every possibility had been drawn off. The same Latin haurire sits behind the everyday verb 'exhaust', and remembering that shared 'haust' spine, with its silent 'h' after 'ex', is the key to keeping the spelling straight.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• haust (from Latin haurire 'to draw out, drain')
• -ive (adjective suffix)