Immediate

How to spell immediate

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce immediate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does immediate mean?

1. adjectiveHappening or done at once, without any delay; or nearest in space, time, or relationship.

Immediate in a sentence

• The manager demanded an immediate response to the customer complaint.

• The medicine brought immediate relief from the pain.

Where does immediate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Late Latin immediatus, which combined the negative prefix im- ('not') with mediatus, meaning 'placed in the middle' or 'intervening'. At its heart sits the Latin medius, simply meaning 'middle', the same root that gives us 'medium', 'median' and 'mediate'. So something immediate was literally 'with nothing in the middle', that is, with no gap, no go-between, and no delay separating it from you. English borrowed the word in the late 1400s, by way of Old French immediat, first in the sense of 'directly connected, with nothing in between', from which the modern senses of 'happening at once' and 'nearest in space or time' both grew. The spelling trap is the doubled m, born from the prefix im- meeting the root medi-, and the silent unstressed ending -ate.

How the word is built

• im- (not)
• medi (middle, from Latin medius)
• -ate (adjective suffix)