Possession

How to spell possession

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce possession

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does possession mean?

1. nounThe state of owning, holding, or having control over something.
2. nounA thing that is owned; a personal belonging.

Possession in a sentence

• The deeds confirmed her legal possession of the cottage.

• The old watch was his most treasured possession.

• The buyer takes possession of the keys on completion day.

• She packed every possession into a single suitcase before the move.

Where does possession come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin possessio, the noun formed from the verb possidere, meaning 'to own' or 'to hold'. That verb was itself built from potis, meaning 'able' or 'having power', joined to sedere, meaning 'to sit', so the literal idea was something like 'to sit as master over' a piece of property. Roman law used possessio as a precise term for the physical holding of land or goods, distinct from legal title, and that legal flavour travelled with the word. English took it through Old French in the 1300s, keeping both the abstract sense of ownership and the concrete sense of a thing owned. The same sedere root that means 'to sit' also gives us 'sediment' and 'reside', while the spelling trap lives in the two separate double-s clusters, pos-SESS-ion, that catch even confident writers.

How the word is built

• pos- (from potis: able, having power)
• -sess- (from sedere: to sit)
• -ion (noun of state)