Resourceful

How to spell resourceful

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce resourceful

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does resourceful mean?

1. adjectiveAble to deal skilfully and promptly with new situations and difficulties by finding clever ways to use what is available.

Resourceful in a sentence

• The resourceful engineer fixed the pump with parts from an old printer.

• Living on a tight budget made her remarkably resourceful with leftovers.

Where does resourceful come from?

Language of origin: French

This word is built from 'resource' plus the suffix '-ful', meaning 'full of' or 'marked by'. 'Resource' itself came into English from the French ressource, a noun drawn from the Old French verb resourdre, meaning 'to rise again' or 'to recover'. That verb traces back to the Latin resurgere, formed from re- 'again' and surgere 'to rise', so the underlying idea is something that springs back up when you need it. The same surgere root sits inside 'surge', 'resurrect' and 'insurgent', all of which share that sense of rising. A resourceful person, then, is literally someone who can find fresh means to rise again out of difficulty, and the spelling trap lives in the unstressed 'ou' of 'source' and the soft '-ce' before '-ful'.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• source (from Latin surgere, to rise)
• -ful (full of, characterised by)