Reservoir

How to spell reservoir

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce reservoir

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reservoir mean?

1. nounA large natural or artificial lake used as a source or store of water.
2. nounA supply or store of something held in reserve, including a container that holds fluid.

Reservoir in a sentence

• The city draws its drinking water from a reservoir in the hills.

• The printer warned that the ink reservoir was nearly empty.

• After the dry summer the reservoir dropped to its lowest level in years.

• The lamp held a small reservoir of oil at its base.

Where does reservoir come from?

Language of origin: French

Reservoir came into English in the early 1600s straight from the French word reservoir, which named a place where something is kept in store. The French noun was built on the verb reserver, meaning to keep back or set aside, and that verb descends from the Latin reservare, formed from the prefix re-, meaning back, and the verb servare, meaning to keep, guard, or preserve. Originally an English reservoir could be any receptacle that held a supply in reserve, and only later did it settle into its familiar sense of a large basin or lake storing water for a town. The same Latin servare also gave us conserve, preserve, and the very word reserve, all sharing the idea of keeping something safe. The awkward spelling, with its silent stretch of letters in -voir, is a direct inheritance from French, which is exactly why the ending trips up writers who spell it the way it sounds.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• serv (from Latin servare: to keep)
• -oir (French noun suffix denoting a place or container)