Syndicate

How to spell syndicate

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce syndicate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does syndicate mean?

1. nounA group of individuals or organisations combined to promote a shared interest or carry out a business venture.
2. verbTo sell an article, cartoon, or programme for simultaneous publication or broadcast across many outlets.

Syndicate in a sentence

• noun

  A betting syndicate pooled its money to buy thousands of lottery tickets.

• verb

  The newspaper agreed to syndicate her weekly column to fifty regional papers.

• noun

  The property was bought by an investment syndicate based overseas.

• verb

  The studio plans to syndicate the show across hundreds of local stations.

Where does syndicate come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word travels back to the Greek syndikos, which described an advocate or a representative who acted on behalf of a whole community in legal matters; it was built from syn-, meaning 'together', and dike, meaning 'justice' or 'right'. Latin took this in as syndicus, a town official or spokesman, and from there French developed syndic for a civic representative and syndicat for the body such people formed. English borrowed 'syndicate' in the seventeenth century, at first for a council or board of officials, and by the nineteenth century it had widened to mean any group of people or firms pooling resources for a shared commercial venture. The journalistic sense, an agency that sells the same article or cartoon to many newspapers, grew from that same idea of a combined operation. Knowing that the middle 'dic' comes from the same justice root as 'judicial' helps fix the spelling, since the 'c' is sounded softly and is easy to misplace.

How the word is built

• syn- (together)
• dic (from Greek dike, justice, via syndikos, an advocate)
• -ate (noun/verb suffix)