Method

How to spell method

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce method

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does method mean?

1. nounA particular, systematic procedure or way of accomplishing or approaching something.

Method in a sentence

• The accountant explained her preferred method for tracking expenses.

• There is no quick method for learning a new language well.

Where does method come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek methodos, which literally meant a 'pursuit' or a 'following after', built from meta, meaning 'after' or 'in pursuit of', and hodos, meaning 'a way' or 'a road'. To the Greeks a methodos was therefore the path you followed in chasing down knowledge, an orderly course of inquiry. The word passed into Latin as methodus and then into English in the early 1500s, at first chiefly in the context of medicine and scholarship, where it described a systematic mode of treatment or investigation. From there the meaning broadened into the everyday sense of any organised, repeatable way of doing something. The same hodos 'road' element survives in 'exodus', literally the 'way out', which is a handy reminder that the troublesome single 'h'-less spelling hides a Greek root for a path.

How the word is built

• meth- (from Greek meta: after, in pursuit of)
• -od (from hodos: a way or road) = a way of pursuing something