Figure

How to spell figure

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce figure

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does figure mean?

1. nounA numerical symbol or an amount expressed in numbers.
2. nounThe shape or form of a person's body, or a shaped outline.
3. nounA diagram or illustration in a document, often numbered for reference.
4. verbTo work something out, calculate, or come to a conclusion.

Figure in a sentence

• noun

  The final sales figure exceeded our forecast for the quarter.

• noun

  Regular swimming helped him keep a trim figure into his fifties.

• noun

  The report refers readers to the figure on the opposite page.

• verb

  He tried to figure the total cost before booking the trip.

• noun

  She wrote the cost as a six figure sum on the invoice.

• noun

  A tall figure appeared in the doorway of the dim hallway.

Where does figure come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin figura, meaning 'shape', 'form' or 'figure', which was built on the verb fingere, 'to mould, fashion or shape', the same root that gave us 'fiction' and 'feign'. Roman writers used figura for everything from a physical outline to a figure of speech, a rhetorical 'shaping' of language. English took the word in the 1200s through Old French, where figure already carried the meanings of bodily form, drawn shape and numerical symbol. From the sense of a written symbol came the modern idea of a 'figure' as a digit or amount, while the older sense of a shaped form survives in talk of a person's figure or a geometric figure. The silent finishing -ure and the soft g are inherited straight from that French and Latin spelling, which is why the word looks nothing like it sounds.

How the word is built

• figur- (from Latin figura: shape, form)
• -e