Startup

How to spell startup

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce startup

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does startup mean?

1. nounA newly founded company, especially a small one in an early growth stage.
2. nounThe act or process of bringing a machine, engine, or computer system into operation.

Startup in a sentence

• The tech startup raised millions from investors within its first year.

• The engineer ran through the startup sequence before the reactor went live.

• She left a corporate job to join a fast-growing startup in the city.

• A slow startup on the laptop suggested too many programs were loading at once.

Where does startup come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern closed compound built from two very old native English words. The verb 'start' descends from the Old English styrtan, which originally meant to leap up or move with a sudden jerk, and only later softened into the sense of beginning something. The particle 'up' comes from the Old English upp, meaning in or to a higher position. Writers first used 'start up' as two words to describe an engine or machine coming to life, and by the middle of the twentieth century the hyphenated and then solid 'startup' form had attached itself to newly founded business ventures. The spelling trap is simply that fluent adults often want to insert a space or a hyphen; in its modern noun and adjective uses it is now most commonly written as one unbroken word.

How the word is built

• start (from Old English styrtan: to leap up, move suddenly)
• up (Old English upp: upward), a closed compound