Growth

How to spell growth

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce growth

What does growth mean?

1. nounThe process of increasing in size, amount, value, or development.
2. nounAn abnormal mass of tissue, such as a tumour or lump, in or on the body.

Growth in a sentence

• The company reported strong growth in annual revenue.

• The surgeon removed a small growth from her shoulder.

• Steady economic growth helped reduce unemployment across the region.

• A biopsy confirmed that the growth was benign.

Where does growth come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from the native English verb grow, which descends from the Old English growan, meaning to flourish, sprout, or increase in size, a verb that originally applied above all to plants and green things pushing up from the soil. To turn that verb into an abstract noun, English added the old suffix -th, the same quiet ending that turns warm into warmth, deep into depth, and wide into width. Interestingly, growth itself is a fairly late formation: while the verb is ancient Anglo-Saxon, the noun is first clearly recorded in the 1500s, having possibly been reinforced by similar forms in Old Norse. The spelling trap lives entirely in that ending, because the -owth cluster is pronounced as a single smooth sound, so writers must remember the silent shape rather than the sound. The same Germanic root also underlies grass and green, all sharing the idea of living things spreading and rising.

How the word is built

• grow (from Old English growan: to flourish, increase)
• -th (noun-forming suffix marking a state or result, as in warmth and depth)