Seatbelt

How to spell seatbelt

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce seatbelt

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does seatbelt mean?

1. nounA strap that secures a person to a seat in a vehicle to reduce injury in a crash.

Seatbelt in a sentence

• The driver waited until every passenger had fastened a seatbelt.

• A worn seatbelt should be inspected and replaced before a long trip.

Where does seatbelt come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern English compound, formed by joining two much older words. The first element, 'seat', came into English from Old Norse 'saeti', meaning 'a place to sit', and was reinforced by the related Old English verb 'sittan', 'to sit'. The second element, 'belt', is far older in English; it descends from Old English 'belt', which was itself borrowed from the Latin 'balteus', meaning 'a girdle or sword-belt'. The two words were welded together in the twentieth century, when cars and aircraft began fitting restraining straps; the term spread widely from the 1950s onward as vehicle safety became a public concern. Because it is a transparent compound of two familiar words, the only real spelling question is whether to write it closed up as one word, and here the single-word form 'seatbelt' is the one to remember.

How the word is built

• seat (a thing to sit on)
• belt (a strap worn around the body)