Termination

How to spell termination

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce termination

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does termination mean?

1. nounThe act of bringing something to an end, or the point at which it ends.

Termination in a sentence

• The termination of the contract gave both parties thirty days notice.

• Her termination from the company came without warning.

Where does termination come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin terminare, meaning 'to limit, set a boundary, or bring to an end', which was built on the noun terminus, the literal word for a boundary marker or border stone. The Romans treated such markers seriously: Terminus was even worshipped as a minor god of boundaries, and his stones were not to be moved. The action noun terminatio, meaning 'a bounding or limiting', passed through Old French as terminacion before settling into English in the late 1300s. Over time the sense shifted from marking a spatial edge to marking the end of any process, period, or arrangement, which gives us modern meanings from ending a contract to the final syllable of a word. The same terminus root still shows up in 'terminal' and 'terminus', and noticing the doubled core 'termin' helps fix the spelling, since the trap lies in the unstressed middle vowels rather than the regular -ation ending.

How the word is built

• termin- (from terminus: boundary, end)
• -ation (noun of action)