Thesis

How to spell thesis

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce thesis

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does thesis mean?

1. nounA long written piece of original research submitted for an academic degree.
2. nounA statement or proposition put forward and supported by reasoning.

Thesis in a sentence

• She spent three years researching her doctoral thesis.

• The central thesis of her talk was that remote work boosts productivity.

• The supervisor returned the draft thesis covered in corrections.

• Every paragraph in the essay should support the main thesis.

Where does thesis come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes straight from the Greek thesis, which literally meant 'a placing' or 'a setting down', formed from the verb tithenai, meaning 'to put' or 'to place'. In ancient rhetoric and philosophy a thesis was a proposition that a speaker 'set down' to be argued and defended, so the modern sense of a claim you put forward grows directly from that physical image of placing something on the table. Latin borrowed the term as thesis, and it passed into English in the late 1500s, at first meaning a proposition advanced for debate. The familiar academic sense, a long written dissertation submitted for a degree, developed from that arguing tradition in the 1600s. The same Greek root for putting and placing sits inside relatives such as 'synthesis' (a putting together), 'hypothesis' (an under-placing), and even 'apothecary', and the unchanged Greek -sis ending is what gives the irregular plural 'theses' rather than 'thesises'.

How the word is built

• thes- (from Greek thesis: a placing, a setting down, from tithenai 'to put, place')
• -is (Greek noun suffix)