Systemic

How to spell systemic

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce systemic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does systemic mean?

1. adjectiveAffecting an entire system or body rather than just one isolated part.

Systemic in a sentence

• The report blamed systemic failures across the whole organisation, not one bad department.

• The infection became systemic once it spread through her bloodstream and reached every organ.

Where does systemic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Systemic is built on the noun system, which traces back to the Greek sustema, meaning 'an organized whole' or 'a set of connected things'. That Greek noun was assembled from sun, meaning 'together', and a root related to histanai, 'to set up' or 'to place', so the literal sense was something set up together into a unified arrangement. English took system through Latin systema and French in the early 1600s, and the adjective systemic was coined later, around the early 1800s, especially in medicine to describe something affecting the entire bodily system rather than one local part. From there it spread into economics, politics, and social commentary, where it now describes problems woven through an entire structure. The spelling trap is the close cousin systematic, which means methodical or done step by step; systemic simply ends in -emic and carries no extra -at- syllable.

How the word is built

• system (from Greek sustema: an organized whole)
• -ic (adjective suffix: relating to)