Individuality

How to spell individuality

13 letters · 7 syllables

How to pronounce individuality

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does individuality mean?

1. nounThe quality or character that makes one person or thing distinct from all others.

Individuality in a sentence

• The strict uniform policy left little room for personal individuality.

• The designer encouraged each client to express their own individuality through colour choices.

Where does individuality come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb dividere, meaning 'to divide' or 'to separate into parts', from which came the adjective individuus, literally 'not divisible' or 'indivisible'. Medieval Latin reshaped individuus into individualis, describing something that cannot be split because it is a single, whole unit. English borrowed 'individual' through this Latin route in the late 1500s, at first carrying the technical sense of something inseparable or single, before drifting toward its modern meaning of a single distinct person. The abstract noun 'individuality' was then built on top by adding the noun-forming suffix -ity, and by the 1600s it described the quality of being one separate and distinctive person. A useful memory hook is that the 'dividuus' core means undivided: an individual is the smallest unit you cannot divide, and individuality is what makes that one unit unmistakably its own.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• divid (from dividere: to divide)
• -ual (adjective-forming)
• -ity (noun-forming)