Versus

How to spell versus

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce versus

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does versus mean?

1. prepositionAgainst or in contrast to, used to set two opposing sides or options side by side.

Versus in a sentence

• The report compared the cost of renting versus buying a home.

• The court case was listed as Smith versus the city council.

Where does versus come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Versus comes straight from Latin, where it was the past participle of the verb vertere, meaning 'to turn'. Literally it meant 'turned' and then 'turned toward' or 'facing', which is how it came to express the idea of one side set opposite another. Medieval lawyers adopted it for court records to mark one party set against another, a usage that still survives in case names where it is abbreviated to 'v.' or 'vs.'. English took the word in this legal sense around the 1400s and later widened it to sport, debate, and any contrast between two options. The same vertere root turns up in a crowd of familiar words such as 'convert', 'reverse', and 'version', all of which carry that core sense of turning, and remembering that family helps fix the single 's' in the middle and the '-us' ending rather than the tempting '-es'.

How the word is built

• vers- (from vertere: to turn)
• -us (Latin ending)