Style
nounA distinctive manner of doing, designing, or expressing something, often relating to fashion or appearance.
How to spell style
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce style
What does style mean?
- nounA distinctive manner of doing, designing, or expressing something, often relating to fashion or appearance.
- verbTo design, arrange, or shape something according to a particular manner or fashion.
Style in a sentence
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noun
Her writing style is clear and confident.
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verb
The salon can style your hair for the wedding.
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noun
The jacket has gone out of style since last season.
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verb
They hired a consultant to style the new product range.
Where does style come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word comes from the Latin stilus, which named the pointed metal instrument that Romans used to scratch letters into wax tablets. Because a writer's chosen instrument shaped the look of the writing, stilus came to mean the manner of expression itself, and from there it broadened into any distinctive way of doing things. English borrowed it through Old French as 'stile' in the 1300s, originally meaning a way of writing or speaking. The modern 'y' spelling is the famous trap: it was introduced later by scholars who wrongly linked the word to the unrelated Greek stylos, meaning a column or pillar, and the mistaken letter simply stuck. That false Greek connection is also why English now has 'stylus' alongside 'style', and why so many writers still hesitate over the vowel.
How the word is built
- styl- (from Latin stilus: a pointed writing tool, hence a manner of writing)
- -e (silent final e)
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