Purchase

How to spell purchase

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce purchase

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does purchase mean?

1. verbTo acquire something by paying money for it.
2. nounSomething that has been bought, or the act of buying it.
3. nounA firm hold or position of leverage that lets force be applied.

Purchase in a sentence

• verb

  They hope to purchase a flat before prices rise again.

• noun

  Keep the receipt in case the purchase proves faulty.

• noun

  His boots could not get enough purchase on the icy slope.

• verb

  You can purchase the upgrade directly from the company website.

• noun

  The new car was the most expensive purchase of her life.

• noun

  The climber searched the rock face for any purchase before moving up.

Where does purchase come from?

Language of origin: French

Purchase entered English in the 1200s from the Old French verb porchacier, which meant 'to seek eagerly, to pursue, to try to obtain'. That word was built from por- (a form of the prefix meaning 'forth' or 'forward', ultimately from Latin pro) joined to chacier, 'to chase or hunt', which descends from Latin captare, 'to try to seize or catch'. So at its root purchase shares an ancestor with the everyday word 'chase', and originally it described the effort of hunting something down rather than simply paying for it. Over time the sense narrowed from 'acquire by any means' to the modern commercial idea of acquiring goods for money. The same imagery of getting a firm hold survives in the mechanical sense of purchase, meaning a secure grip or leverage. The spelling trap is the unstressed second syllable: the ending sounds like 'chess' but is written -chase, and the silent connection to 'chase' is the clue that fixes it.

How the word is built

• pur- (forth, from Latin pro)
• chase (to pursue, from Latin captare 'to chase, seize')