Publish

How to spell publish

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce publish

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does publish mean?

1. verbTo prepare and issue written, printed, or digital material for public sale or general reading.

Publish in a sentence

• The company plans to publish its annual report next week.

• Academic journals publish peer-reviewed research throughout the year.

Where does publish come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin publicare, meaning 'to make public' or 'to bring before the people', which was built on publicus, the adjective for things belonging to the people or the state. English took it through Old French, where the verb publier was reshaped in the way many French verbs were, gaining the -iss stem that English turned into the familiar -ish ending, just as 'finish' came from finir and 'punish' from punir. It entered English in the 1300s, at first meaning broadly to announce something openly or proclaim it to a crowd, long before printing existed. Only later, once the printing press made books a common product, did it narrow to the modern sense of issuing written work for sale or general reading. The -ish ending is the spelling point worth remembering: it does not come from a root meaning 'somewhat', but from that Old French verb pattern, and the same publicus root still sits inside 'public' and 'publicity'.

How the word is built

• publ- (from Latin publicus: of the people, public)
• -ish (verb-forming suffix from Old French -iss)