Occupation

How to spell occupation

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce occupation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does occupation mean?

1. nounA person's regular job, trade, or profession.
2. nounThe act of taking and holding control of a place, especially a territory seized by armed forces.

Occupation in a sentence

• The form asked for her name, address, and occupation.

• The city endured years of foreign military occupation before liberation.

• Carpentry had been the family occupation for three generations.

• Protesters staged a peaceful occupation of the empty office building.

Where does occupation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin occupatio, meaning 'a seizing' or 'a taking possession of', which was formed from the verb occupare, 'to seize, take over, or busy oneself with'. That verb itself joins the prefix ob-, here meaning 'towards' or 'upon', to the verb capere, 'to take or grasp', so the literal idea is laying hold of something. English picked it up through Old French occupacion in the 1300s, at first describing the activity that fills a person's time, which is why it came to mean a trade or profession. The military sense, holding and controlling a territory, grew naturally from the older idea of taking possession of a place. The same capere root sits behind a crowd of familiar relatives such as capture, capable, and accept, and remembering that double c followed by single p in 'capere' helps fix the awkward 'cc' then single 'p' spelling.

How the word is built

• oc- (ob-: towards, upon)
• cup (from capere: to take, seize)
• -ation (noun of action or state)