Statue

How to spell statue

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce statue

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does statue mean?

1. nounA carved or cast three-dimensional figure of a person or animal, usually life-size or larger.

Statue in a sentence

• A bronze statue of the founder stands in the town square.

• Pigeons had perched on the marble statue for years.

Where does statue come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin statua, meaning a standing image or carved figure, which was built directly on the verb stare, meaning 'to stand'. The idea was concrete and visual: a statue is something set up to stand in place, a figure made to remain upright and permanent. English took the word in the 1300s through Old French statue, keeping both the spelling and the sense of a sculpted human or animal form. The same standing root quietly survives in a crowd of relatives such as 'stature', 'status', 'stationary' and 'statute', all of which carry the notion of standing, standing still, or standing as fixed law. That family resemblance is exactly the spelling trap: people sometimes blur statue with stature or statute, so it helps to remember that a statue ends in -ue, the soft 'choo' sound, with no second 't'.

How the word is built

• stat- (from Latin stare, to stand)
• -ue (noun ending)