Template

How to spell template

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce template

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does template mean?

1. nounA preset pattern, shape, or document used as a guide for making copies or producing consistent results.

Template in a sentence

• She saved the invoice as a template so the whole team could reuse it.

• The joiner cut a cardboard template before shaping the expensive timber.

Where does template come from?

Language of origin: French

This word began life in the 1600s as 'templet', a craftsman's term for a small piece of wood or metal cut to a fixed shape and used as a gauge or pattern to copy. Its deeper origin is uncertain, but it is usually traced to the French 'templet', a diminutive form, and ultimately to the Latin 'templum', which could mean a small timber or beam as well as a sacred space marked out for observation. The form is also linked to the weaving device once called a 'temple', which held cloth stretched to a set width on a loom. Over time the ending shifted from -et to -ate, very probably under the influence of the word 'plate', since many of these patterns were thin plates of metal; that quiet swap is exactly why the modern spelling ends in -ate rather than the more phonetic -et. By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the meaning had broadened from physical gauges to any reusable master pattern, and the computing age then handed it the familiar sense of a preset document or file.

How the word is built

• templ- (pattern or gauge, from earlier 'templet')
• -ate (ending altered from -et, by association with 'plate')