Realise

How to spell realise

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce realise

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does realise mean?

1. verbTo become fully aware of a fact or situation and understand it clearly.
2. verbTo make something happen in fact, or to convert assets into actual money.

Realise in a sentence

• Halfway through the meeting she began to realise the budget was already spent.

• After years of saving they could finally realise their plan to buy a house.

• Many drivers fail to realise how quickly the fuel runs out on that route.

• The firm sold the warehouse to realise enough cash to clear its debts.

Where does realise come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from 'real', which traces back to the Latin realis, meaning 'actual' or 'relating to things', itself formed from res, the plain Latin word for 'thing' or 'matter'. The verb form arrived in English around 1600, partly modelled on the French realiser, and its earliest sense was the very literal 'to make something real' or 'to bring into actual existence', as when a plan or hope is turned into fact. Only later, during the eighteenth century, did the now-dominant mental sense develop: 'to grasp something clearly in the mind', as if making a fact real to oneself. A separate commercial sense, 'to convert property or assets into actual money', also grew from the same idea of turning something abstract into something tangible. The spelling trap lies entirely in the ending: British convention favours the -ise form here, while the -ize variant dominates elsewhere, so writers constantly second-guess the final consonant.

How the word is built

• real- (from Latin realis: actual, relating to things)
• -ise (verb-forming suffix)

British and American spelling

Realise is the British spelling. American English spells it realize.