Selection

How to spell selection

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce selection

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does selection mean?

1. nounThe act of choosing someone or something from a group, or the person or thing chosen.

Selection in a sentence

• The manager defended her selection of the new sales team.

• The shop offered a wide selection of imported cheeses.

Where does selection come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin selectio, meaning 'a choosing out', which was built on the verb seligere 'to pick out' or 'choose apart'. That verb joins se-, a prefix meaning 'apart' or 'aside', with legere, meaning 'to gather' or 'to choose', the same root that gives English 'collect', 'elect', and even 'lecture'. The literal idea was of setting something aside from the rest of a group. English adopted the word in the early 1600s, and it gained a famous extra life in the nineteenth century when Charles Darwin used 'natural selection' to describe how nature sorts the surviving from the perishing. The spelling keeps the Latin 'lect' core intact, which is a useful anchor: it is select plus -ion, never 'selec-tion' with anything missing.

How the word is built

• se- (apart)
• lect (from legere: to choose, gather)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)