Status

How to spell status

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce status

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does status mean?

1. nounThe current condition, position, or standing of a person, group, or situation.

Status in a sentence

• The courier app shows the delivery status in real time.

• Her residency status was confirmed by the immigration office.

Where does status come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word was taken directly from Latin, where status meant 'a standing', 'a position', or 'a condition', and was formed from the verb stare, meaning 'to stand'. The same stand-still idea runs through a whole family of English words built on that Latin root, including 'statue', 'station', 'stationary', and 'state' itself, which arrived earlier through Old French. English adopted status in its untouched Latin form in the seventeenth century to describe a person's legal or social standing, and the more general sense of 'current condition' (as in the status of a project) grew naturally from there. Because it kept its original Latin shape, it never picked up an English ending, which is why the spelling stays plain with no double letters and no silent traps. The familiar phrase 'status quo' simply pairs it with the Latin for 'in which', meaning the state in which things currently stand.

How the word is built

• sta- (root of stare: to stand)
• -tus (noun suffix indicating the result of an action)