Prevent

How to spell prevent

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce prevent

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does prevent mean?

1. verbTo stop something from happening or to stop someone from doing something.

Prevent in a sentence

• Regular servicing can prevent expensive breakdowns later.

• The new locks prevent anyone from entering the building after hours.

Where does prevent come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin praevenire, which literally meant 'to come before' or 'to get ahead of', built from prae 'before' and venire 'to come'. When it first arrived in English in the fifteenth century, it kept that original sense and meant 'to anticipate' or 'to act in advance of something', so an early writer might 'prevent' a need by meeting it ahead of time. Over the following centuries the meaning hardened from 'getting there first' into the modern idea of stopping something from happening at all. The venire root that supplies the spelling is the same one buried in 'invent', 'convene', and 'event', so the -vent ending is reliably regular. Knowing that prevent is simply pre plus vent makes its spelling easy to reconstruct.

How the word is built

• pre- (before)
• vent (from Latin venire: to come)