Notification

How to spell notification

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce notification

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does notification mean?

1. nounA formal or automatic message that informs someone of something, or the act of giving such information.

Notification in a sentence

• The bank sent a notification confirming the payment had cleared.

• He turned off every notification on his phone before the meeting.

Where does notification come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb notificare, meaning 'to make known', which was assembled from notus, the past participle of noscere 'to come to know', and facere 'to make or do'. The literal sense was therefore the act of making something known to someone. It passed into late Middle English through Old French notification during the 1400s, carrying the idea of formally announcing or informing. For a long time it kept a rather official, legal flavour, describing a written notice served on a person, and only in the modern era did it widen to cover any alert, including the digital pings that fill phones today. The same notus root sits inside the everyday words 'notice', 'note' and 'notable', which is a useful reminder that the spelling opens with 'noti' rather than 'note'. The trickier middle, the unstressed '-fic-' before '-ation', simply preserves that buried facere, the same 'make' element found in 'magnify' and 'clarify'.

How the word is built

• noti- (from Latin notus: known)
• -fic- (from facere: to make)
• -ation (noun of action)