Linguistics

How to spell linguistics

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce linguistics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does linguistics mean?

1. nounThe scientific study of language, including its structure, sounds, meaning, and history.

Linguistics in a sentence

• She earned her degree in linguistics before becoming a translator.

• The lecture on linguistics covered how sounds form words across cultures.

Where does linguistics come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin lingua, which literally meant 'tongue' and, by extension, 'language' or 'speech'. An older Latin form was dingua, related to the same root that gives English 'tongue', and the d shifted to l over time. From lingua came the adjective lingualis, and modern European scholars built words like the French linguistique to name the systematic study of language. English adopted 'linguistics' in the nineteenth century, formed from 'linguist' (a person skilled in languages) plus the suffix -ics that marks a branch of study, on the same pattern as 'physics' and 'mathematics'. The buried gu in lingua is the spelling trap: the word keeps that quiet 'gu' even though we say a 'gw' sound, which is also why the related 'language' and 'bilingual' share the same awkward cluster.

How the word is built

• lingu- (from Latin lingua: tongue, language)
• -ist (one who studies)
• -ics (field of study)