Quotation

How to spell quotation

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce quotation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does quotation mean?

1. nounA group of words taken from a text or speech and repeated exactly, usually attributed to its source.
2. nounA formal statement of the price at which a job or product will be supplied.

Quotation in a sentence

• She opened the essay with a famous quotation from a war poet.

• The builder sent a written quotation for the kitchen renovation.

• The editor asked him to check every quotation against the original book.

• We compared each quotation before choosing the cheapest plumber.

Where does quotation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb quotare, meaning 'to mark the number of' or 'to divide into chapters and verses', which itself was built on quotus, meaning 'of what number' or 'how many'. Medieval scholars used quotare for the practical task of numbering the verses of a text so that a particular passage could be located and cited precisely. From that referencing habit the Latin noun quotatio came to mean the act of citing a numbered passage, and English adopted it in the early 1500s as 'quotation', meaning a passage repeated from somewhere else. The familiar 'qu' opening and the unstressed middle syllable both trace straight back to quotus, and the same root sits inside everyday relatives such as 'quote' and 'quota'. The commercial sense of a stated price grew later, from the idea of citing or 'quoting' a figure rather than a written line.

How the word is built

• quot- (from Latin quotus: of what number)
• -ation (noun of action/result)