External

How to spell external

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce external

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does external mean?

1. adjectiveBelonging to, located on, or coming from the outside.

External in a sentence

• The report cited external factors such as the economy and the weather.

• She backed up her files onto an external hard drive.

Where does external come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin externus, meaning 'outward' or 'on the outside', which was formed from exter, an old comparative of ex 'out of'. The same ex root gives English a long family of 'out' words, including exterior, exit, and exotic. English took external in the late 1300s and early 1400s, often through learned and scientific writing that needed a precise term for things lying on the outer surface or coming from outside a body. The contrast pair internal arrived on the same pattern from internus 'inward', and keeping the two opposite spellings straight is part of the word's everyday usefulness. The spelling has stayed close to the Latin, so the tricky part for writers is simply the unstressed middle, '-ter-', and remembering the final '-al' rather than '-le'.

How the word is built

• extern- (from Latin externus: outward, on the outside)
• -al (adjective suffix)