Repair

How to spell repair

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce repair

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does repair mean?

1. verbTo restore something damaged or broken back to good working condition.
2. nounAn instance or the act of fixing something that is damaged, or its resulting condition.

Repair in a sentence

• verb

  A local mechanic agreed to repair the gearbox over the weekend.

• noun

  The bridge has been closed for urgent repair since the storm.

• verb

  The landlord promised to repair the leaking roof before winter.

• noun

  The surveyor noted that the fence was in poor repair.

Where does repair come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The everyday sense of repair comes from the Latin reparare, which combined re-, meaning 'again' or 'back', with parare, meaning 'to make ready' or 'to prepare'. The literal idea was to make something ready once more, to restore it to working order. English borrowed it through Old French reparer in the 1300s, keeping the sense of mending or putting right what had been damaged. The parare root is surprisingly productive, surfacing in prepare, apparatus, and even parachute, all of which carry that notion of getting something ready. A quite separate verb repair, meaning to go or betake oneself to a place, has a different origin in Latin repatriare ('to return to one's homeland'); the two words look identical but are historical strangers. The fix-it sense is by far the more common today, and the simple re-plus-pair structure is what keeps the spelling regular.

How the word is built

• re- (again, back)
• pair (from Latin parare: to make ready, prepare)