Intro

How to spell intro

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce intro

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does intro mean?

1. nounA short opening part of something such as a song, a talk, or a piece of writing.

Intro in a sentence

• The band played a long guitar intro before the vocals began.

• Her presentation opened with a brief intro explaining the agenda.

Where does intro come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is a casual twentieth-century clipping of 'introduction', which itself descends from the Latin verb introducere, meaning 'to lead in' or 'to bring inside'. That verb was built from the prefix intro-, meaning 'inward' or 'to the inside', and ducere, meaning 'to lead', the same root that gives us 'conduct', 'reduce', and 'produce'. The full noun 'introduction' entered English through Old French in the late medieval period to describe the act of bringing one thing or person into the presence of another. By the early 1900s, in the worlds of music, broadcasting, and casual speech, speakers trimmed the long word down to the brisk 'intro' for the opening section of a song, a talk, or a book. The spelling simply preserves the first syllables of the parent word, which is why it ends in a bare -o rather than anything more elaborate.

How the word is built

• Clipped form of 'introduction': intro- (inward, in)
• duc (from Latin ducere, to lead)
• -tion (noun suffix), shortened to just the opening element