Locate

How to spell locate

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce locate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does locate mean?

1. verbTo find or determine the exact place where something or someone is.

Locate in a sentence

• The engineer used the map to locate the broken water main.

• Rescue teams worked through the night to locate the missing hiker.

Where does locate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin locus, meaning simply 'a place' or 'a spot'. From that noun came the verb locare, 'to place' or 'to set down somewhere', and its past participle locatus supplied the English form. English adopted 'locate' around the early nineteenth century, initially in American usage, with the sense of fixing or settling something in a particular place, and it later broadened to mean discovering exactly where something already is. The same locus root sits inside many familiar relatives, including 'location', 'local', 'allocate', and 'dislocate', all of which keep the tell-tale 'loc' spelling. Remembering that single 'loc' core, glossed as 'place', is the surest guard against doubling the consonant or wandering away from the standard spelling.

How the word is built

• loc (from Latin locus: place)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)