Industrialization

How to spell industrialization

17 letters · 7 syllables

How to pronounce industrialization

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does industrialization mean?

1. nounThe development of industries and large-scale manufacturing in a country or region on a wide scale.

Industrialization in a sentence

• Rapid industrialization transformed the country from a farming economy into a manufacturing power.

• The museum exhibit traces the industrialization of the north during the nineteenth century.

Where does industrialization come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin industria, which meant 'diligence', 'activity', or 'purposeful effort', and which itself probably grew from an older form meaning 'building up' or 'working at something from within'. English took 'industry' from this root through Old French in the late 1400s, at first describing personal hard work and skill rather than factories. Only in the 1700s and early 1800s, as mechanised manufacturing spread, did 'industry' come to mean organised large-scale production, and from that the adjective 'industrial' was formed. The verb 'industrialize' and then the noun 'industrialization' appeared in the nineteenth century to name the historical process of turning farming economies into factory ones. The long chain of suffixes is exactly what makes the spelling a memory test: the calm '-al-ize-ation' sequence has to be assembled piece by piece rather than sounded out, and the unstressed vowels in the middle give no clue to the letters.

How the word is built

• industri- (from Latin industria: diligence, activity)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ize (verb-forming suffix)
• -ation (noun of process)