Station

How to spell station

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce station

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does station mean?

1. nounA regular stopping place for trains or buses, or a building from which a particular service operates.
2. verbTo put a person or thing in a particular place for a specific purpose.
3. nounA person's social rank or position in life.

Station in a sentence

• noun

  The train pulled into the station exactly on time.

• verb

  The manager will station a guard at every entrance.

• noun

  He married well above his station in society.

• noun

  She reported the theft at the local police station.

• verb

  They decided to station extra staff at the busy checkout.

• noun

  In that era, your station determined almost everything about your life.

Where does station come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin statio, which meant a standing still, a post, or a place where something stays put, and that noun was built directly on the verb stare, meaning 'to stand'. The Romans used statio for a military post or guard position, and also for an anchorage where ships could safely stand at rest. English took the word in through Old French station during the 1300s, at first for a stopping place or fixed position, and the sense broadened over the centuries to cover any regular post or facility, from a coach stop to the modern railway station. The same stare root quietly underlies a whole family of English words such as 'stationary', 'static', 'status' and 'statue', all sharing the idea of standing or staying fixed. Because the ending sounds like 'shun', the trap for writers is remembering it is spelled with -tion rather than -shun or -sion.

How the word is built

• stat- (from stare: to stand)
• -ion (noun suffix forming a place or act)