Occupy

How to spell occupy

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce occupy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does occupy mean?

1. verbTo fill or take up a space, time, or position; to live in a place or take control of it.

Occupy in a sentence

• The new filing cabinets occupy most of the back office.

• A long commute can occupy two hours of her day.

Where does occupy come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin occupare, which meant to seize, to take possession of, or to lay hold of something. It was built from the prefix ob-, here softened to oc- before a c and carrying the sense of towards or over, joined to capere, the verb meaning to take or to grasp. English adopted it in the 1300s by way of Old French occuper, at first with the strong sense of taking forcible hold of land or property, and later broadening to the gentler ideas of filling a space, dwelling in a place, or keeping someone busy. The very same capere root sits inside a crowd of relatives such as capture, capable, and recipient, all of which share that core notion of taking. The spelling trap is the doubled c followed by a single p: writers often want to double the p instead, but the doubling belongs to the prefix meeting the root, not to the ending.

How the word is built

• oc- (from Latin ob-: towards, over)
• -cupy (from capere: to take, seize)
• -y