Illustrating

How to spell illustrating

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce illustrating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does illustrating mean?

1. verbProviding pictures for a text, or making something clearer by giving examples or evidence.

Illustrating in a sentence

• She spent the summer illustrating a children's book about pirates.

• The lecturer kept illustrating each point with a real case from the archive.

Where does illustrating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb illustrare, which meant 'to light up', 'to make bright', or 'to illuminate'. That verb was built from the prefix in- (here softened to il- before the letter l, carrying the sense of 'upon' or 'into') and lustrare, meaning 'to make bright' or 'to purify with light', a relative of lux, the Latin word for 'light'. By the time the word reached English in the sixteenth century it had taken on the figurative sense of shedding light on a subject, that is, explaining or clarifying it, and only later did it settle into the modern idea of adding pictures to a text. The hidden 'light' inside the word is a useful memory hook: the same lustr element shines through in 'lustre' and 'lacklustre'. The double l at the front comes from that assimilated prefix, and the single l in the middle of -trat- is the trap that catches careful writers.

How the word is built

• il- (form of in-: into, upon)
• lustr (from lustrare: to light up, make bright)
• -ate (verb)
• -ing (present participle)