Linguistic

How to spell linguistic

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce linguistic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does linguistic mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to language or to the scientific study of language.

Linguistic in a sentence

• The survey measured the linguistic skills of new employees.

• Her doctoral research explored the linguistic patterns of regional dialects.

Where does linguistic come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin lingua, which literally meant 'tongue', the organ of speech, and by extension 'language' or 'speech'. An older Latin form was dingua, and the shift to lingua is thought to have been influenced by lingere, meaning 'to lick'. By the nineteenth century scholars studying language scientifically formed 'linguistics' on this Latin base, and 'linguistic' arose as the matching adjective for anything relating to language or its study. The same lingua root surfaces in many familiar relatives, including 'language', 'bilingual', and 'linguine' (the pasta named for its tongue-like flat shape). The spelling trap sits in the middle: the 'gu' is needed to keep the hard g sound before the i, which is why writers must not drop the u when reaching for 'lingistic'.

How the word is built

• lingu- (from Latin lingua: tongue, language)
• -istic (adjective suffix combining -ist and -ic)