Issuance

How to spell issuance

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce issuance

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does issuance mean?

1. nounThe act of officially supplying, distributing, or putting something into circulation, such as documents, currency, or securities.

Issuance in a sentence

• The issuance of the new passport took six weeks to complete.

• The company announced the issuance of additional shares to raise capital.

Where does issuance come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb exire, meaning literally 'to go out', formed from ex- ('out') and ire ('to go'). The past form gave Old French the noun issue, meaning a 'way out', an 'exit', or an 'outcome', which English borrowed in the 1300s; you can still hear that 'coming out' idea when we speak of the issue of a magazine or the issuing of a document. To make a noun for the act of putting something out, English later added the Latin-derived suffix -ance, which builds abstract nouns of action, giving us 'issuance' in the early seventeenth century. The same exire root sits quietly inside everyday words like 'exit' and 'transient'. The spelling trap is that the silent 'e' of 'issue' is dropped before -ance, and the soft middle is easy to overload with extra letters.

How the word is built

• issu- (from Old French issue, 'a going out', from Latin exire)
• -ance (noun-forming suffix denoting an action or process)