Revelation
nounA surprising fact or piece of information that is made known after being hidden or unknown.
How to spell revelation
10 letters · 4 syllables
How to pronounce revelation
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does revelation mean?
- nounA surprising fact or piece of information that is made known after being hidden or unknown.
- nounThe disclosure of divine or sacred truth to human beings.
Revelation in a sentence
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The audit produced a startling revelation about the missing funds.
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The theology course examined how prophets claimed to receive divine revelation.
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News that the two managers were related came as a complete revelation to the team.
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In his sermon he spoke of scripture as a form of revelation to humankind.
Where does revelation come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word descends from the Latin verb revelare, which literally meant 'to unveil' or 'to draw back the veil', built from the prefix re- ('back' or 'un-') and velum, a 'veil' or 'covering'. From that verb came the Latin noun revelatio, the act of uncovering something previously hidden. English took the word in the 1300s through Old French revelacion, at first overwhelmingly in a religious sense: the disclosure of divine truth, which is why the final book of the Christian Bible is titled Revelation. Over time the meaning broadened to any sudden, surprising disclosure of a fact that had been concealed. The same velum root quietly survives in the word 'reveal' itself, and remembering the buried 'veil' (vel) can help fix the single 'l' and the unstressed middle vowel that the spelling so easily blurs.
How the word is built
- re- (back, un-)
- vel (from Latin velum: veil, covering)
- -ation (noun of action)
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