Grateful

How to spell grateful

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce grateful

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does grateful mean?

1. adjectiveFeeling or showing warm thanks for something received or done.

Grateful in a sentence

• She was deeply grateful for the support of her colleagues.

• We are grateful to everyone who donated to the appeal.

Where does grateful come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Grateful comes from the now obsolete English adjective 'grate', meaning 'pleasing' or 'thankful', which was taken from the Latin gratus, literally 'pleasing, agreeable, thankful'. To this borrowed root English added the native suffix '-ful', meaning 'full of', so the word originally conveyed being full of thankfulness. The same gratus root spreads widely through English in words like 'gratitude', 'gratify', 'gratuity' and even 'congratulate'. The familiar spelling trap is that the first syllable sounds exactly like the everyday word 'grate' (a metal frame, or to shred), yet here it carries no separate meaning of its own. The word settled into English in the late 1500s, and unlike most '-ful' adjectives it has no freestanding base word, since 'grate' meaning 'pleasing' has long since vanished from ordinary use.

How the word is built

• grate- (from Latin gratus: pleasing, thankful)
• -ful (full of)