Spreadsheet

How to spell spreadsheet

11 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce spreadsheet

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does spreadsheet mean?

1. nounA computer program or document that arranges data in a grid of rows and columns for calculation and analysis.

Spreadsheet in a sentence

• The accountant updated the budget spreadsheet before the meeting.

• She built a spreadsheet to track every household expense.

Where does spreadsheet come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern compound built from two very old native English elements. The first part, 'spread', comes from the Old English sprǣdan, meaning 'to stretch out' or 'to lay flat', a sense still alive in spreading a tablecloth. The second part, 'sheet', goes back to Old English scēat, meaning a broad flat piece of cloth or paper. The combined word originally described a large accounting page that 'spread' across two facing pages of a ledger so figures could be read in rows and columns. When electronic accounting programs arrived in the late 1970s, with VisiCalc as the famous early example, the term was carried over to the digital grid, and that computing sense is now the dominant one. The spelling trap is the buried 'ea' in 'spread', which is pronounced like a short 'e' yet keeps the silent 'a'.

How the word is built

• spread (to lay out flat, from Old English sprǣdan)
• sheet (a flat piece, from Old English scēat)