Ration

How to spell ration

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ration

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ration mean?

1. nounA fixed allowance of food, fuel, or other supplies, especially one set during a time of shortage.
2. verbTo limit the amount of something that each person may have, usually because it is scarce.

Ration in a sentence

• noun

  During the war each household received a weekly ration of sugar.

• verb

  The government had to ration petrol when the supply ran low.

• noun

  The climbers divided the last ration of dried fruit between them.

• verb

  They decided to ration the drinking water until the rescue arrived.

Where does ration come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin ratio, which meant a reckoning, a calculation, or an account, and by extension reason itself. French turned this into ration, a fixed allowance worked out by calculation, the precise amount due to a soldier or sailor. English borrowed the French word in the early 1700s, originally as a military and naval term for the daily issue of food. The wartime experience of the twentieth century, when staples like sugar and butter were strictly limited, fixed the modern sense firmly in everyday speech. The very same Latin ratio also gives us reason, ratio, and rational, which is a useful memory hook: a ration is an amount worked out by reasoning, hence the rati- spelling rather than the more obvious rash-.

How the word is built

• ratio- (from Latin ratio: a reckoning, calculation)
• -on (noun forming, via French)