Pro

How to spell pro

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pro

What does pro mean?

1. nounA person who is highly skilled at something or does it for a living, especially as opposed to an amateur.
2. nounAn argument or consideration in support of something, usually contrasted with a con.

Pro in a sentence

• After years of practice she paints like a pro.

• Before deciding, she listed every pro and con on paper.

• The tennis club hired a pro to coach the junior squad.

• The committee weighed each pro against the drawbacks of the move.

Where does pro come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This little word actually carries two histories. As a word meaning 'in favour of', it comes straight from the Latin preposition pro, which meant 'for', 'on behalf of', or 'in front of', and it has survived almost unchanged in the familiar phrase 'pros and cons', where pro is balanced against the Latin contra, meaning 'against'. The same Latin pro hides inside dozens of English words such as 'proceed', 'promote', and 'protect', where it adds the sense of forward or forth. The very different sense of pro meaning an expert is far more recent: it is simply a shortened, conversational clipping of 'professional', which itself traces back through Old French to the Latin profiteri, 'to declare publicly'. English speakers began trimming 'professional' down to 'pro' in the late nineteenth century, first in sport and then everywhere. So the three-letter spelling is fixed and obvious; the only real trap is remembering it is just two consonants and an o, with no silent ending.

How the word is built

• pro (Latin: for, in favour of); in the 'professional' sense, a clipping of professional