Videotape

How to spell videotape

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce videotape

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does videotape mean?

1. nounA length of magnetic tape used to record moving images and sound, or a recording stored on it.
2. verbTo record images and sound onto magnetic tape.

Videotape in a sentence

• noun

  The old wedding videotape had degraded after years in the attic.

• verb

  The production team planned to videotape the rehearsal for later review.

• noun

  The lawyer asked the court to admit the security videotape as evidence.

• verb

  She asked a friend to videotape the lecture while she was away.

Where does videotape come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a twentieth century compound built from two older pieces. The first element, video, comes straight from the Latin verb videre, meaning 'to see', and the Latin first person form video literally means 'I see'; the same root sits inside words such as 'vision', 'evident' and 'visible'. The second element, tape, is a native English word descending from the Old English tæppe, a narrow strip or band of woven fabric, which over time was applied to any thin flexible strip, including the magnetically coated ribbon used for recording. When engineers developed magnetic recording of moving pictures in the 1950s, they joined the two to name the medium, and 'videotape' was in common use by the late 1950s. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the spelling is regular; the only thing to watch is keeping it as one solid word with the silent 'e' from 'tape' at the end.

How the word is built

• video- (Latin videre: to see)
• tape (a strip of magnetic recording material)