Multilateral

How to spell multilateral

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce multilateral

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does multilateral mean?

1. adjectiveInvolving or agreed by several parties, nations, or groups at the same time.

Multilateral in a sentence

• The trade pact was a multilateral agreement between twelve nations.

• The ministers favoured a multilateral approach over separate bilateral talks.

Where does multilateral come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is built from two Latin pieces: multus, meaning 'much' or 'many', and latus, meaning 'side', joined with the adjective ending -alis. In Latin the form lateralis already described something 'belonging to the side', and from latus English also inherited 'lateral' and 'bilateral'. By the seventeenth century English writers were combining the prefix multi- with such roots to coin terms meaning 'many-sided', and 'multilateral' first appeared in geometric and physical descriptions of figures with many sides. From the nineteenth and especially the twentieth century the sense broadened into diplomacy and trade, where it now describes agreements involving many parties at once, in contrast to 'bilateral' dealings between just two. The spelling stays regular once you see the parts, but the unstressed middle vowels in 'multi-lateral' are easy to blur, so anchoring it to 'lateral' (the side) keeps the letters in order.

How the word is built

• multi- (many)
• later- (from Latin latus: side)
• -al (adjective suffix)