Methodology

How to spell methodology

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce methodology

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does methodology mean?

1. nounA system of methods and principles used in a particular field, or the study of such methods.

Methodology in a sentence

• The report explained the research methodology in careful detail.

• The auditors questioned the methodology behind the cost estimates.

Where does methodology come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word is built from two Greek pieces. The first is methodos, which literally meant 'a following after' or 'a pursuit', formed from meta (after, in pursuit of) and hodos (a way, road, or path); it came to mean a systematic way of investigating something. The second is -logia, from logos (word, reason, account), the familiar ending that signals a body of study or discourse, as in 'biology' and 'geology'. The combined form passed into English by way of the Latinised methodologia and French methodologie during the early 1800s, when scholars needed a name for the formal study of methods. Note that the word carries an idea slightly grander than a plain 'method': strictly it means the study or system of methods, though in everyday writing people often use it to mean the chosen procedure itself. The shared hodos 'road' even links it distantly to 'episode' and 'exodus', and remembering that 'method' is the visible core helps with the otherwise tricky run of unstressed vowels in the middle.

How the word is built

• method (from Greek methodos: a pursuit of knowledge, way of inquiry)
• -o- (connecting vowel)
• -logy (from logos: study, account)