Interact

How to spell interact

8 letters · 3 syllables

1 of the 21 people asked to spell interact in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce interact

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does interact mean?

1. verbTo act on, communicate with, or affect one another, especially through conversation or shared activity.

Interact in a sentence

• The new software lets staff interact with customers in real time.

• Shy children sometimes find it hard to interact with their classmates.

Where does interact come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from two Latin pieces: the prefix inter-, meaning 'between' or 'among', and the verb agere, meaning 'to do, drive, or set in motion', whose past participle actus gave English the noun and verb 'act'. The combination expresses the idea of two or more things acting upon or with one another. Although both parts are thoroughly Latin, the compound itself is relatively modern: it was coined in English in the early nineteenth century, originally in scientific and philosophical writing about forces or bodies that affect each other. From those technical roots it spread into ordinary use to describe people talking, working, or socialising together. The same agere root sits behind a large family of everyday words such as 'agent', 'action', and 'agitate', while inter- supplies the front half of 'international', 'interval', and 'interrupt'.

How the word is built

• inter- (between, among)
• act (from Latin agere: to do, drive, perform)