Professional

How to spell professional

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce professional

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does professional mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to, qualified for, or conducted in the manner of a skilled paid occupation.
2. nounA person engaged in a skilled occupation, especially one requiring training, or one who does for pay what amateurs do unpaid.

Professional in a sentence

• adjective

  The report needed a more professional tone before it went to the client.

• noun

  As a seasoned professional, she handled the crisis without losing her composure.

• adjective

  She sought professional advice from an accountant before filing the return.

• noun

  The tournament was open to both amateurs and every professional on the circuit.

Where does professional come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb profiteri, meaning 'to declare openly' or 'to make a public statement', which combined the prefix pro- ('forth, before others') with fateri ('to confess or acknowledge'). From this came the medieval Latin professio, the act of declaring one's vows on entering a religious order, and that meaning passed into Old French and then into English as 'profession'. By the 1500s a 'profession' could be any occupation one publicly declared oneself trained in, especially the learned callings of law, medicine, and the church. The adjective 'professional' grew from this in the 1700s to mean 'relating to a profession', and later 'doing for pay what others do as a hobby'. The spelling trap lives in that buried double s and the single f: it is one f and two s letters, a direct echo of the Latin profiteri and its noun professio.

How the word is built

• profess- (from Latin profiteri: to declare publicly)
• -ion (state/act)
• -al (adjective/noun suffix)