Graduation

How to spell graduation

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce graduation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does graduation mean?

1. nounThe act of successfully completing a course of study and receiving a degree or diploma, or the ceremony marking it.
2. nounA series of marks or divisions on an instrument used for measuring.

Graduation in a sentence

• Her parents flew in to attend the graduation ceremony.

• The chemist read the liquid level against the fine graduation on the cylinder.

• After graduation he spent a year travelling before starting work.

• Each graduation on the thermometer represents one degree.

Where does graduation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin gradus, meaning a 'step' or 'stage', the same root that gives us 'grade', 'gradual' and 'degree'. From gradus came the medieval Latin verb graduari, 'to take a degree', literally to advance by steps, which was used in universities for the formal conferring of academic rank. English picked up 'graduation' in the late 1500s, at first meaning the act of dividing something into measured degrees, as on a scientific scale. The familiar sense of completing a course of study and receiving a degree grew naturally from that same idea of moving up by stages. Remembering the buried 'step' in gradus helps explain why the word keeps its -u- before the -ation, mirroring 'graduate'.

How the word is built

• grad (from gradus: step, degree)
• -u-
• -ation (noun of action/result)