Meditate

How to spell meditate

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce meditate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does meditate mean?

1. verbTo engage in quiet, focused contemplation, often to calm the mind or reflect deeply on something.

Meditate in a sentence

• She likes to meditate for ten minutes before starting her workday.

• The retreat teaches busy professionals how to meditate without distraction.

Where does meditate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verb meditari, which meant 'to think over', 'to consider carefully', or 'to rehearse in the mind'. That verb was the deponent form built on a root meaning 'to measure' or 'to take appropriate measures', the same ancient root that gave us words like 'measure' and 'medical', all carrying the idea of weighing something thoughtfully. English took the word in during the late 1500s, when 'meditate' meant simply to ponder or plan something deliberately, and only later did it gather its now common spiritual sense of quiet contemplation and stilling the mind. Notice that the spelling keeps a single 'd' and a single 't' before the '-ate', because each comes from a separate part of the Latin stem rather than from any doubling. The unstressed middle vowel, the 'i' in medit-, is the spot writers most often second-guess, since it sounds like a faint schwa.

How the word is built

• medit- (from Latin meditari: to think over, reflect)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)