Revision

How to spell revision

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce revision

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does revision mean?

1. nounThe process of reviewing and altering a text, plan, or piece of work to correct or improve it; a corrected version produced this way.
2. nounThe activity of going back over previously learned material in preparation for an examination.

Revision in a sentence

• The editor sent back the report for one more revision before it went to print.

• She spent the whole weekend doing revision for her history exam.

• The contract needed a small revision to the payment terms.

• The teacher handed out a revision guide covering every topic on the paper.

Where does revision come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Revision comes from the Latin revisere, meaning 'to look at again' or 'to visit once more', which was built from the prefix re- ('again') and visere, an intensive form of videre ('to see'). The same videre root sits behind a whole family of English words about seeing and inspecting, including 'vision', 'visible', 'supervise' and 'review'. The word reached English in the late 1500s by way of the French revision and the Late Latin revisio, originally carrying the literal idea of a second look at something. From that came the modern sense of going back over a document or plan in order to correct and improve it. The British sense of 'studying for an examination' is a later extension of the same notion: you revisit material you have already learned. Keeping the spelling steady is easy if you picture re + vis ('see again') plus the -ion ending shared by vision itself.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• vis (from Latin visere/videre: to see, to look at)
• -ion (noun suffix)