Urge

How to spell urge

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce urge

What does urge mean?

1. verbTo strongly encourage or press someone to do something.
2. nounA strong desire or impulse to do something.

Urge in a sentence

• verb

  The doctors urge patients to cut down on salt.

• noun

  She fought the urge to check her phone during the meeting.

• verb

  Campaigners urge the council to repair the road.

• noun

  A sudden urge to travel made him book a flight that night.

Where does urge come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes directly from the Latin verb urgere, which literally meant 'to press', 'to push', or 'to drive forward', the same physical sense you feel when something bears down on you. English adopted it in the sixteenth century, keeping that idea of pressure but applying it mostly to people: to urge someone is to press them toward an action. From the verb came the noun, naming the inner pressure that pushes us to do something. The same Latin root survives in 'urgent', which describes a matter that presses on us and cannot wait. Because the word is short and phonetic, its spelling is rarely a problem, though the soft 'g' sound spelled with a plain g (not j) is the one feature worth noticing.

How the word is built

• urge (from Latin urgere: to press, drive, push)