Transaction

How to spell transaction

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce transaction

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does transaction mean?

1. nounAn instance of buying, selling, or otherwise exchanging something between parties.

Transaction in a sentence

• The bank flagged the transaction as suspicious and froze the card.

• Each transaction on the statement shows the date and the amount.

Where does transaction come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin transactio, meaning 'an agreement reached' or 'a settling of business', which was formed from the verb transigere, 'to drive through' and so 'to complete or settle'. That verb in turn joined trans, meaning 'across' or 'through', with agere, the broad Latin verb 'to do, drive, or carry on', the same root that gives English 'act', 'agent', and 'agile'. The literal idea was of driving a piece of business all the way through to its conclusion. English took the word up in the fifteenth century, first for legal and commercial agreements that had been formally settled, before it broadened to mean any single dealing or exchange between parties. The spelling keeps the visible trans- prefix and the -action body, so the trap is mainly the unstressed middle: writing it as the crisp 'trans + action' rather than blurring the vowel helps fix it.

How the word is built

• trans- (across, through)
• act (from agere: to do, drive)
• -ion (noun of action)