Portion

How to spell portion

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce portion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does portion mean?

1. nounA part or amount of something larger, especially an allotted share or a serving of food.
2. verbTo divide something into parts or shares and distribute it.

Portion in a sentence

• noun

  The restaurant serves a generous portion of pasta for the price.

• verb

  The cook will portion the stew into individual containers for the week.

• noun

  A large portion of the budget goes toward staff salaries.

• verb

  Managers must portion the workload fairly across the team.

Where does portion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Portion comes from the Latin portio, meaning 'a share' or 'a part', a word closely tied to the phrase pro portione, 'in proportion to', which is also the source of the English word 'proportion'. The Latin term passed into Old French as 'porcion' before English adopted it in the 1300s, keeping the sense of an allotted part or a person's allocated share. In its earliest English uses it often referred to a person's inheritance or the share of property settled on someone, a meaning that survives in talk of a 'marriage portion' or dowry. Over time the everyday sense narrowed to any divided part of a larger whole, including the familiar serving of food on a plate. The spelling keeps the Latin 'port-' stem and the '-tion' ending, so it is pronounced with the soft 'sh' sound even though it is written with 't'.

How the word is built

• port- (from portio: a share, part)
• -ion (noun suffix)