Reputation

How to spell reputation

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce reputation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reputation mean?

1. nounThe general opinion or estimation that people hold about a person, organisation, or thing.

Reputation in a sentence

• The firm built its reputation on honest pricing and reliable service.

• One careless email can damage a careful reputation overnight.

Where does reputation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb putare, which literally meant 'to reckon' or 'to think over', the same root that gives us 'compute' and 'dispute'. Adding the prefix re-, meaning 'again', produced reputare, 'to count over, to consider repeatedly', and from this came the noun reputatio, meaning 'a consideration' or 'the regard in which a person is held'. English took the word from Old French reputacion in the late 1300s, settling on the sense of the general opinion that others hold about someone or something. The link to 'reckoning' is a useful memory aid: a reputation is essentially the running tally that other people keep about you. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle vowel, written -pu- and never -pe-, because it preserves the original Latin put.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• put (from putare: to think, reckon)
• -ation (noun of action/state)