Movie

How to spell movie

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce movie

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does movie mean?

1. nounA recorded story or sequence of images shown as a film, watched in a cinema or at home.

Movie in a sentence

• They booked tickets for the new action movie on Friday night.

• The whole family settled on the sofa to watch a movie together.

Where does movie come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word movie is a casual American shortening of 'moving picture', the phrase used around 1900 for the new technology of projecting a sequence of still photographs fast enough to create the illusion of motion. The base verb 'move' came into English through Old French 'mover' from Latin 'movere', meaning 'to set in motion' or 'to stir', the same root that gives us 'motion', 'motor' and 'remove'. To this familiar verb people attached the informal '-ie' ending, the same friendly diminutive that turns words into 'cookie' or 'goalie', and 'movie' was in everyday print by about 1910. It began as breezy slang for both the films themselves and the picture house where they were shown, and although it was born in the United States it spread quickly across the English-speaking world. Because the spelling drops the silent 'e' of 'move' and keeps only the 'mov', writers sometimes wrongly insert an 'e' to make 'moovie' or 'movey', but the trap is small.

How the word is built

• mov- (from move, to set in motion)
• -ie (diminutive/colloquial noun suffix)