Illustrate

How to spell illustrate

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce illustrate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does illustrate mean?

1. verbTo explain or make something clear by using examples, comparisons, or pictures.

Illustrate in a sentence

• The manager used a simple chart to illustrate the budget changes.

• A few real cases will illustrate the point far better than statistics.

Where does illustrate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb illustrare, which meant to light up, to make bright, or to throw light upon something. It was built from the prefix in- (here meaning upon, and assimilated to il- before the l) and the verb lustrare, to brighten or illuminate, which belongs to the same family as lux and lumen, the Latin words for light. The original sense was strongly visual, the idea of casting light so that a thing becomes clearly seen. English adopted it in the sixteenth century, first in the figurative sense of making a subject clear or distinguished, and only later in the familiar modern sense of adding pictures or examples to explain something. The hidden light at the heart of the word is a useful spelling cue: the double l at the front comes from that assimilated prefix, and the middle holds the lustr that still glints in the word lustre.

How the word is built

• il- (variant of in-: in, upon)
• lustr (from lustrare: to light up)
• -ate (verb suffix)