Treatise

How to spell treatise

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce treatise

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does treatise mean?

1. nounA long, formal piece of writing that deals systematically with a particular subject.

Treatise in a sentence

• Her treatise on monetary policy ran to four hundred pages.

• The philosopher published a dense treatise on human reasoning.

Where does treatise come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word arrived in English in the early 1300s from Anglo-French tretiz, a form of Old French traitier, meaning 'to deal with' or 'to discuss'. That French verb descends from the Latin tractare, which literally meant 'to handle, manage, or drag about', the frequentative of trahere 'to pull or drag'. The sense moved naturally from physically handling something to mentally handling a subject, so a treatise became a written work that handles a topic thoroughly and systematically. The same Latin root sits behind a cluster of familiar relatives, including 'treat', 'treaty', 'tractor', and 'tractable', all of which share the idea of pulling, handling, or dealing with something. The spelling trap is the ending: it looks as though it should be -ice or -ese, but the historical -ise ending preserves the French and Latin lineage.

How the word is built

• treat- (from Latin tractare: to handle, deal with)
• -ise (noun suffix forming a written account)