Signage

How to spell signage

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce signage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does signage mean?

1. nounSigns considered collectively, especially those directing, informing, or advertising in a public or commercial space.

Signage in a sentence

• The new signage in the airport made each terminal much easier to find.

• The council approved the shop's signage before the renovation could begin.

Where does signage come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The base word sign comes from the Latin signum, meaning a mark, token, or standard, which entered English through Old French signe in the 1200s. The suffix -age arrived from French, ultimately from the Latin -aticum, and English uses it to form collective nouns that name a whole class or body of things, as in baggage, foliage, and frontage. Signage is a much younger formation, coined in the early twentieth century out of the worlds of commerce and advertising to mean signs taken collectively rather than any single sign. Because it was built inside English from an old root and a productive suffix, it never picked up irregular spelling; the trap is simply remembering that there is no e between the n and the a, since the word is sign plus age, not a respelling of signing. The g is the soft g of sign, and the whole word reads cleanly once you see those two familiar parts.

How the word is built

• sign (from Latin signum: mark, token)
• -age (collective noun suffix denoting a group or body of things)