Occupational

How to spell occupational

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce occupational

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does occupational mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to a person's job, profession, or the work they do.

Occupational in a sentence

• The factory introduced new occupational safety standards after the inspection.

• Long hours at a screen can cause occupational strain on the eyes.

Where does occupational come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb occupare, which meant 'to seize', 'to take possession of', or 'to take up', formed from ob, meaning 'towards' or 'over', and a root related to capere, 'to take' or 'to grasp'. From occupare came the noun occupatio, describing the act of taking hold of something or, by extension, the business or employment that takes up a person's time. English absorbed 'occupation' through Old French in the 1300s, first in the sense of seizing land and soon in the sense of one's work or trade. The adjective 'occupational' is a much later English formation, built by adding the suffix -al to 'occupation' around the early 1800s to describe things relating to a person's job, most familiarly in phrases like occupational hazard and occupational therapy. The doubled c, single p, and the -ation joint are the spelling traps, all inherited from that Latin capere root hidden inside the modern word.

How the word is built

• oc- (from ob-, towards)
• cup- (from capere: to take, seize, occupy)
• -ation (noun of action)
• -al (adjective suffix)