Serious

How to spell serious

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce serious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does serious mean?

1. adjectiveDemanding careful thought or concern because of importance or potential danger; not joking or trivial.

Serious in a sentence

• The doctor described her condition as serious but stable.

• A serious shortage of staff delayed the whole project.

Where does serious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin adjective serius, which meant 'weighty', 'grave', or 'earnest', describing matters of real importance rather than trivial amusements. It passed into late Middle English in the 1400s, partly through Old French serieux, carrying that same sense of solemn earnestness. The underlying idea has always been about heaviness or gravity, as opposed to lightness and play, which is why we still speak of a serious illness or a serious decision when we mean something that weighs on us. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the unstressed 'i' before the '-ous' is easy to drop or reorder, and the word is sometimes mistakenly written with an extra 'e' or an 'a'. Keeping the 'seri-' root in mind, the same stem that gives the noun seriousness, helps fix the correct order of those vowels.

How the word is built

• seri- (from Latin serius: grave, weighty)
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of)