Unifying

How to spell unifying

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce unifying

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does unifying mean?

1. adjectiveBringing separate people, parts, or ideas together into a single whole.

Unifying in a sentence

• The captain became a unifying figure for the divided team.

• A shared logo gives the brand a unifying visual identity.

Where does unifying come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb unificare, meaning 'to make into one', which was built from unus, the Latin word for 'one', and the verb facere, meaning 'to do' or 'to make'. English took it in through the Old French unifier during the late Middle Ages, and 'unify' itself was firmly settled in English by the sixteenth century. The present participle 'unifying' simply adds the -ing ending to describe the act or quality of bringing separate things together into a single whole. The same unus root sits inside a large family of familiar words, including 'unit', 'union', 'universe' and 'unique', all of which carry the idea of oneness. Because the root keeps a single 'n' and the stress falls on the first syllable, the trickier part for writers is the soft -fy ending shifting to -fying, where the silent 'e' of an imagined base is dropped rather than kept.

How the word is built

• uni- (one)
• -fy (to make, from Latin facere 'to do/make')
• -ing (present participle suffix)