Pacific

How to spell pacific

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce pacific

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pacific mean?

1. adjectivePeaceful in character or intention; calm and inclined to avoid conflict.

Pacific in a sentence

• The diplomat took a pacific approach to the dispute, avoiding any threats.

• Despite the chaos around her, she kept a pacific and steady manner.

Where does pacific come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin pacificus, meaning 'peace-making' or 'tending toward peace'. It was built from pax, the Latin noun for 'peace' (the same root that gives us 'pact' and 'appease'), combined with the verb facere, meaning 'to make', so the literal sense was 'one who makes peace'. English adopted it in the sixteenth century, partly through French, as an adjective describing a calm, untroubled, or conciliatory temperament. The explorer Ferdinand Magellan famously named the Pacific Ocean Mar Pacifico ('peaceful sea') in 1520 because its waters seemed so calm after the stormy passage around South America, and that proper name now overshadows the everyday adjective. The spelling trap lies in the single c and single f and the soft -cific ending, which sounds like 'siffic' rather than revealing its root in pax.

How the word is built

• pac- (from pax: peace)
• -fic (from facere: to make) = peace-making