Reusable

How to spell reusable

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce reusable

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reusable mean?

1. adjectiveAble to be used more than once rather than thrown away after a single use.

Reusable in a sentence

• She packed her lunch in a reusable container to cut down on waste.

• The supermarket now sells sturdy reusable bags at the checkout.

Where does reusable come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from three layers. The core is 'use', which English took in the 1200s from Old French user, itself from the Latin verb uti, meaning 'to make use of' or 'to employ', whose past participle usus gave us many relatives such as 'utility' and 'usual'. To that base English added the suffix -able, a productive ending from Latin -abilis meaning 'capable of being' or 'fit for', which lets us turn a verb into an adjective describing what can be done to something. The prefix re- comes from Latin and simply means 'again' or 'back', the same element seen in 'return' and 'repeat'. Put together, 'reusable' literally means 'able to be used again', and it is a fairly modern compound that became common in English only in the twentieth century as packaging and recycling made the idea everyday. The spelling trap is that re- and use sit directly next to each other with no joining letter, so the word keeps two separate vowels and is not hyphenated.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• use (from Latin uti, usus: to use)
• -able (capable of being)