Sufficient

How to spell sufficient

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce sufficient

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sufficient mean?

1. adjectiveEnough to meet a need or purpose; adequate in amount or degree.

Sufficient in a sentence

• The team had sufficient funding to finish the project on time.

• We gathered sufficient evidence to support the complaint.

Where does sufficient come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb sufficere, which meant 'to put under, to supply, or to be adequate', formed from sub- 'up to or under' and facere 'to make or do'. Its present participle sufficiens described something that was 'making enough' or 'meeting the need', and that is the sense English eventually inherited. The word arrived in English in the late 1300s by way of Old French, and Geoffrey Chaucer was among the early writers to use it. The same facere root quietly powers a huge family of English words, including 'factory', 'efficient', and 'deficient', and noticing that shared -cient spelling in 'efficient' and 'deficient' is a handy way to remember that sufficient takes the same soft -cient ending rather than -tient or -sient. The spelling trap lives in that ending, where a 'c' is doing the work of an 'sh' sound.

How the word is built

• suf- (variant of sub-, up to)
• fic (from Latin facere: to make or do)
• -ient (adjective suffix)