Integrity

How to spell integrity

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce integrity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does integrity mean?

1. nounThe quality of being honest and holding firmly to strong moral principles.
2. nounThe state of being whole, sound, or undamaged.

Integrity in a sentence

• The auditor was praised for her professional integrity in reporting the discrepancy.

• Engineers tested the structural integrity of the old bridge before reopening it.

• Clients trust the firm because of its long record of integrity.

• The breach threatened the integrity of the company's entire database.

Where does integrity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin noun integritas, which meant 'soundness' or 'wholeness', built on the adjective integer, literally 'untouched' or 'whole'. That integer in turn came from in- ('not') joined to a root related to tangere ('to touch'), so the original picture was of something that had not been tampered with or broken into. English took the word in through Old French integrite in the 1400s, at first in the plain sense of being undivided or complete, and the moral meaning of an upright, unbroken character grew naturally out of that idea of wholeness. The very same integer root still gives us the mathematical 'integer', a whole number, and the verb 'integrate', to make whole. Knowing the spelling traces straight back to integer helps with the trap in the middle: it is integ-r-ity, with the same letters as that whole number.

How the word is built

• integr- (from Latin integer: whole, untouched, intact)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix denoting a state or quality)