Prevalence

How to spell prevalence

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce prevalence

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does prevalence mean?

1. nounThe fact or condition of being widespread or common, often measured as how frequently something occurs in a population.

Prevalence in a sentence

• The survey measured the prevalence of remote working across the company.

• Researchers tracked the prevalence of diabetes in older adults.

Where does prevalence come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb valere, which meant 'to be strong' or 'to be powerful', the same root that gives us 'value', 'valid', and 'valiant'. By adding the prefix prae-, meaning 'before' or 'ahead', Latin formed praevalere, 'to be stronger' or 'to have the upper hand'. From that came the adjective praevalens, describing something that prevails or dominates, which English borrowed in the seventeenth century to form 'prevalence'. At first it carried the sense of greater power or superiority, but over time it shifted toward the modern meaning of being widespread or commonly found, especially in medicine and statistics. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle and the soft -ence ending: writers reach for the strong 'val' but then mishear the final syllable as -ance, even though the Latin -ens ancestry fixes it as -ence.

How the word is built

• prae- (before, ahead)
• val (to be strong, from valere)
• -ence (noun suffix)