Notify

How to spell notify

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce notify

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does notify mean?

1. verbTo formally tell or inform someone of something.

Notify in a sentence

• The bank will notify customers before any change to their accounts.

• Please notify the office if you plan to work from home.

Where does notify come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This verb traces back to the Latin notificare, meaning 'to make known', which was built from notus, the past participle of noscere 'to come to know', combined with facere 'to make or do'. English took it in during the late 1300s through Old French notifier, originally in the sense of declaring or announcing something officially. The notus root is a busy one in English: it also underlies notice, notable, notorious, and the word note itself, all sharing the idea of something being known or marked. The everyday spelling trap is the ending: notify keeps the -ify spelling rather than -ofy or -efy, because the suffix carries the 'make' sense seen in clarify and simplify.

How the word is built

• not- (from notus: known)
• -ify (to make)