Storage

How to spell storage

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce storage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does storage mean?

1. nounThe act of keeping items in a particular place until they are needed, or the space used for that purpose.

Storage in a sentence

• We put the winter coats into storage over the summer.

• The spare furniture is in storage across town.

Where does storage come from?

Language of origin: French

Storage is built from the verb 'store' plus the noun-forming suffix '-age', and it surfaced in English around the early 1600s, first in the sense of keeping goods safely and the fee charged for doing so. The underlying verb 'store' came into Middle English from the Old French verb 'estorer', meaning 'to build, furnish, or stock', which itself goes back to the Latin 'instaurare', 'to set up, renew, or restore'. The same Latin root sits behind the English word 'restore', which is a useful family connection to remember. The suffix '-age', also borrowed from French, regularly turned verbs into nouns naming an action or a related charge, as in 'carriage', 'postage', and 'breakage'. For the speller, the trap is simply that the silent 'e' of 'store' is dropped before '-age' yet the soft 'g' sound is preserved, giving 'storage' rather than the doubled or 'e'-keeping forms writers sometimes reach for.

How the word is built

• stor- (from store: to keep or stock)
• -age (noun suffix denoting a process, place, or charge)