Segmentation

How to spell segmentation

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce segmentation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does segmentation mean?

1. nounThe act or process of dividing something into separate parts or sections.

Segmentation in a sentence

• The marketing team relied on customer segmentation to target each audience.

• Careful segmentation of the budget made the spreadsheet far easier to read.

Where does segmentation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin segmentum, which literally meant 'a piece cut off' or 'a strip', formed from the verb secare, meaning 'to cut'. That same cutting root gives English a whole family of relatives, including 'section', 'sector', and even 'dissect', so the underlying idea is always one of dividing something whole into parts. The noun 'segment' entered English in the late 1500s, first as a geometry term for a portion of a line or circle marked off from the rest. The longer form 'segmentation' was built in English by adding the action suffix '-ation', and it grew popular in the nineteenth century in biology and other sciences to describe the process of dividing a body or a thing into distinct parts. Because the spelling marches straight through 'segment' before adding '-ation', remembering the base word is the easiest way to keep the middle letters in order.

How the word is built

• segment (from Latin segmentum: a piece cut off)
• -ation (noun of process or action)