Inclusive

How to spell inclusive

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce inclusive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inclusive mean?

1. adjectiveOpen to and welcoming of everyone, deliberately not excluding any group or individual.
2. adjectiveContaining the stated end points of a range, with the named limits counted in.

Inclusive in a sentence

• The company rewrote its policy to create a more inclusive workplace.

• The conference runs from Monday to Friday inclusive, so plan for five full days.

• The festival aims to be inclusive of every age and background.

• The price quoted is inclusive of taxes and delivery.

Where does inclusive come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb includere, meaning 'to shut in' or 'to enclose', which combined the prefix in- ('in, into') with claudere ('to close or shut'). The past participle stem inclus- gave rise to a Medieval Latin form inclusivus, describing something that takes things in rather than leaving them out. English adopted it in the fifteenth century, at first in technical and legal senses about ranges that contained their stated limits, as in 'pages five to ten inclusive'. Over time it broadened to its warmer modern meaning of welcoming everyone and excluding no one. The same claudere root sits inside the everyday opposite 'exclude' and inside 'conclude' and 'recluse', and remembering that buried -clus- helps explain why the word is spelled with an s rather than the c some writers expect.

How the word is built

• in- (in, into)
• clud/clus (from Latin claudere: to shut, close)
• -ive (adjective suffix)