Site

How to spell site

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce site

What does site mean?

1. nounA particular place or piece of ground where something is located, built, or happens.
2. nounA location on the internet made up of connected web pages.
3. verbTo place or position something in a particular spot.

Site in a sentence

• noun

  The construction site was fenced off for safety.

• noun

  The company updated its site with new prices.

• verb

  The council plans to site the new clinic near the station.

• noun

  Workers in hard hats walked across the muddy site.

• noun

  You can book the tickets through their booking site.

• verb

  Engineers had to site the turbine away from houses.

Where does site come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin situs, meaning 'position', 'placement', or 'the way something is laid out', which itself grew from the verb sinere, 'to let be' or 'to set down'. English took it in during the late 1300s, at first to describe the particular spot of ground a building or town occupied. From that root sense of a fixed location, it broadened to cover construction grounds, archaeological digs, and, much more recently, the digital 'place' you visit online, the website. It is worth keeping clear of its two soundalikes: 'sight', the native Old English word tied to seeing, and 'cite', from Latin citare meaning 'to summon or quote'. The trap in writing is purely aural, since all three are pronounced identically yet carry quite different roots and spellings.

How the word is built

• site (from Latin situs: position, location)

Words that sound like site

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• cite: To quote or refer to a source, authority, or example as evidence or justification.
• sight: The faculty of seeing, or something that is seen or worth looking at.