Narrative

How to spell narrative

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce narrative

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does narrative mean?

1. nounA spoken or written account of connected events; a story or the way events are presented.
2. adjectiveRelating to or characterised by the telling of a story.

Narrative in a sentence

• noun

  The memoir follows a clear chronological narrative from childhood to retirement.

• adjective

  The documentary uses a strong narrative structure rather than dry statistics.

• noun

  The company tried to control the public narrative after the data breach.

• adjective

  Her essay relied on narrative techniques borrowed from fiction.

Where does narrative come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb narrare, meaning 'to tell' or 'to recount', which itself is linked to gnarus, meaning 'knowing' or 'acquainted with'; in other words, to narrate originally carried the sense of making something known. That same gnarus root is a distant cousin of the English word 'know', so a narrative is literally a way of passing on knowledge through telling. The Latin past participle narratus gave rise to the adjective narrativus, describing something suited to telling a story. English took the word in through Old French 'narratif' in the fifteenth century, first as an adjective and soon as a noun for a connected account of events. The double 'r' in the middle, which trips up many writers, is inherited directly from that Latin narrare and is worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• narrat- (from narrare: to tell, recount)
• -ive (adjective/noun suffix meaning 'tending to' or 'relating to')