Incite

How to spell incite

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce incite

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does incite mean?

1. verbTo stir up or provoke someone to take action, especially angry, violent, or unlawful action.

Incite in a sentence

• The speaker was arrested for trying to incite a riot outside the courthouse.

• Managers warned that the leaked memo could incite the workforce to walk out.

Where does incite come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb incitare, meaning 'to urge on' or 'to spur into action', built from the prefix in- ('on' or 'toward') and citare ('to set in rapid motion, to summon or rouse'). That citare was itself a frequentative of ciere, meaning 'to set in motion' or 'to call', so the literal sense was something like 'to keep driving something forward'. English took it through Old French inciter in the fifteenth century, and the modern meaning of stirring people up to act, often to violence or disorder, follows naturally from that idea of urging on. The same Latin root sits inside the everyday words 'cite', 'excite', and 'recite', all of which involve calling or rousing something. The spelling trap is real here, because incite sounds exactly like the noun 'insight'; remembering the shared 'cite' family (you cite, you recite, you incite) keeps the spelling on track.

How the word is built

• in- (on, toward)
• cite (from Latin citare: to set in motion, urge)