Resultant

How to spell resultant

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce resultant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does resultant mean?

1. adjectiveOccurring or produced as a consequence of something else.
2. nounA single force or vector equivalent to the combination of two or more others.

Resultant in a sentence

• adjective

  The merger and the resultant job losses dominated the news.

• noun

  The engineer calculated the resultant of the two opposing forces.

• adjective

  Heavy rainfall and the resultant flooding closed the motorway.

• noun

  Adding the horizontal and vertical components gives the resultant.

Where does resultant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb resultare, meaning 'to spring back' or 'to rebound', which was a frequentative form of resilire, 'to leap back'. That verb was built from the prefix re-, meaning 'back', and the verb salire, 'to leap or jump', the very same root that gives us 'salient' and 'somersault'. By the time the form reached medieval Latin it had softened from physical rebounding to the idea of something that 'follows' or 'arises' as a consequence. English adopted the adjective in the sixteenth century to describe whatever issues from a cause, and scientists later borrowed it as a noun for the single force or vector that emerges from combining several others. The spelling trap sits in the unstressed ending: it is -ant, not -ent, a clue preserved from its Latin present participle.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• sult (from salire: to leap)
• -ant (adjective/noun suffix)