Inhibit
verbTo hold back, hinder, or prevent a process, action, or feeling from developing freely.
How to spell inhibit
7 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce inhibit
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does inhibit mean?
- verbTo hold back, hinder, or prevent a process, action, or feeling from developing freely.
Inhibit in a sentence
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Cold temperatures can inhibit the growth of bacteria in stored food.
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A strict manager may inhibit the team from sharing honest feedback.
Where does inhibit come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word comes from the Latin inhibere, meaning 'to hold in' or 'to restrain', formed from the prefix in- ('in' or 'on') joined to habere, the everyday Latin verb meaning 'to hold' or 'to have'. The literal sense was something like holding a thing back so it cannot move forward freely. English took it up in the fifteenth century, originally in a legal and church context where to inhibit someone was to formally forbid them from acting. Over time the meaning broadened into the modern senses of hindering a process or restraining a person's behaviour. The same habere root surfaces in a crowd of English relatives such as 'habit', 'exhibit' and 'prohibit', and remembering that shared -hibit chunk is a tidy way to keep the spelling steady, since the trap is hearing a soft vowel before the final t.
How the word is built
- in- (in, on)
- -hibit (from Latin habere: to hold, have) = to hold back
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