Hectic

How to spell hectic

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hectic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hectic mean?

1. adjectiveFull of frantic, restless activity; busy and chaotic.

Hectic in a sentence

• The office becomes hectic in the final week before the tax deadline.

• Juggling two young children and a full-time job makes her mornings hectic.

Where does hectic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word goes back to the Greek hektikos, meaning 'habitual' or 'continuous', which was built on hexis, a noun for a 'habit', 'condition', or settled 'state of the body'; that in turn came from the verb echein, 'to have' or 'to hold'. Ancient and medieval physicians used the term for a kind of fever that was constant and wasting rather than coming in fits, the sort that accompanied consumption (tuberculosis), and so 'hectic' long described someone flushed, feverish, and chronically unwell. English picked the word up in the late 1300s through Old French etique and Late Latin hecticus, and the later restored spelling with its 'h' and 'c' reflects that Greek and Latin ancestry. The flushed, feverish 'hectic' look gradually came to suggest agitation and feverish activity, and only in the twentieth century did the now familiar sense of 'frantically busy and chaotic' take over. A useful memory hook is that the word shares its root with 'hexis', the idea of a fixed bodily state, even though everyday usage now means the opposite of calm and settled.

How the word is built

• hect- (from Greek hektikos: habitual, from hexis 'habit, state')
• -ic (adjective suffix)