Identity

How to spell identity

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce identity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does identity mean?

1. nounThe set of characteristics or facts that establish who a person is or what a thing is.

Identity in a sentence

• The bank asked her to confirm her identity before releasing the funds.

• A stolen passport can put your whole identity at risk.

Where does identity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Late Latin identitas, meaning 'sameness', which scholars built on the Latin pronoun idem, literally 'the same'. The idea behind it was the quality of being one and the same thing rather than another, a concept that mattered to medieval logicians arguing about whether two descriptions pointed at a single object. English took the word in through Old French identite during the late 1500s, originally in this philosophical sense of being identical to oneself over time. From there it broadened to mean the distinguishing character that makes a person or thing recognisably itself, and later still the practical sense of the facts that prove who someone is. The same idem root surfaces in the everyday word 'identical', which is a useful memory hook: both keep the 'ident' spine, so the spelling never doubles a letter or drops the 't'.

How the word is built

• ident- (from idem: the same)
• -ity (noun suffix forming a quality or state)