Series

How to spell series

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce series

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does series mean?

1. nounA number of related things, events, or items arranged or occurring one after another.

Series in a sentence

• The publisher released a series of cookery books over three years.

• The new drama series attracted millions of viewers each week.

Where does series come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes directly from the Latin series, meaning 'a row, a chain, or a connected succession of things'. That noun was formed from the verb serere, which literally meant 'to join together' or 'to link', the same idea behind threading beads onto a string. English adopted the Latin form unchanged in the early 1600s, originally used by scholars to describe a sequence of related items or events following one another. The notion of links in a chain explains the modern senses: a run of television episodes, a set of sporting fixtures, or a mathematical sum of terms in order. Because English borrowed the Latin word whole, it kept the unusual ending where the same spelling serves as both singular and plural, which is a frequent surprise for writers who expect a plural to differ from its singular.

How the word is built

• seri- (from Latin serere: to join, to link)
• -es (noun ending)