Syllabus

How to spell syllabus

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce syllabus

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does syllabus mean?

1. nounA document setting out the topics, requirements, and schedule of an academic course.

Syllabus in a sentence

• The lecturer handed out the syllabus on the first day of term.

• Every reading on the exam is listed somewhere in the syllabus.

Where does syllabus come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Syllabus is one of the most famous accidents in the dictionary. It traces back to a printer's error in a 1470s edition of Cicero's letters, where the original Greek word sittybas (the accusative plural of sittyba, meaning a parchment label or title-slip pasted onto a scroll) was misread and set in type as 'syllabos'. Once that mistaken form existed in print, scholars assumed it was genuine Greek and connected it, wrongly, to the verb syllambanein, meaning 'to gather together', which seemed to fit a list that gathers a course's contents. The form was then Latinised as syllabus and entered English in the 1650s with its modern meaning of an outline of topics. So the doubled L and the single B that catch writers out are not the marks of an honest etymology at all; they are fossilised from a centuries-old typo. Because the word is really a 'ghost word' born from a slip, there is no reliable root to reason your way to the spelling.

How the word is built

• syllab- (stem of the borrowed Latin/Greek form)
• -us (Latin noun ending)