Inhibition

How to spell inhibition

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce inhibition

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inhibition mean?

1. nounA feeling that holds a person back from acting or expressing themselves freely.
2. nounThe slowing or blocking of a chemical, biological, or physiological process.

Inhibition in a sentence

• After two glasses of wine she lost all inhibition on the dance floor.

• The drug works through the inhibition of an enzyme that fuels the tumour.

• The therapist helped him work through the inhibition that kept him silent in meetings.

• Researchers measured the inhibition of bacterial growth around each antibiotic disc.

Where does inhibition come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb inhibere, meaning 'to hold in' or 'to restrain', which was formed from the prefix in- ('in') and the verb habere ('to have, to hold'). The related noun inhibitio described the act of checking or restraining something. English took the word in through Old French and Latin during the late Middle Ages, when it carried a legal sense of a formal order forbidding or staying an action. Over time the meaning broadened from holding back a legal process to holding back an impulse, feeling, or chemical reaction. The familiar habere root also survives in everyday relatives such as 'habit' and 'exhibit', and recognising the buried 'hibit' (hold) helps explain why the spelling keeps the single 'h' and the 'bit' that learners often mangle.

How the word is built

• in- (in, into)
• hibit (from Latin habere: to hold)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)