Experiment

How to spell experiment

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce experiment

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does experiment mean?

1. nounA controlled test or trial carried out to discover something or to check whether an idea works.
2. verbTo try out new methods, ideas, or materials in order to learn or improve.

Experiment in a sentence

• noun

  The lab recorded every result from the chemistry experiment.

• verb

  Chefs often experiment with unusual spice combinations.

• noun

  Her marketing experiment compared two versions of the website.

• verb

  The students were encouraged to experiment with different layouts.

Where does experiment come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin experimentum, meaning 'a trial, a test, or proof gained by trying'. That noun was built on the verb experiri, 'to try out' or 'to put to the test', which combines the prefix ex- 'out, thoroughly' with the root periri 'to attempt or risk'. The very same risky root sits inside the word 'peril', so an experiment was literally something you ventured or chanced. English picked it up in the late fourteenth century through Old French, at first meaning simply a test or trial, and only later narrowed toward the modern scientific sense of a controlled procedure. The tricky stretch for spellers is the unstressed middle, the '-peri-' followed by the soft '-ment', where the vowels blur into a schwa and tempt people to drop a letter.

How the word is built

• ex- (out, thoroughly)
• peri (to try, attempt)
• -ment (noun/result suffix)