Visit

How to spell visit

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce visit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does visit mean?

1. verbTo go to see a person or place for a period of time.
2. nounAn act of going to see a person or place, usually for a short time.

Visit in a sentence

• verb

  They plan to visit their grandparents over the holidays.

• noun

  Her visit to the dentist lasted only twenty minutes.

• verb

  Tourists often visit the old castle on the hill.

• noun

  We enjoyed a brief visit to the coastal town.

Where does visit come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin verb visitare, meaning 'to go to see' or 'to inspect', which was a frequentative form of visere, 'to go to look at'. That in turn rests on videre, the ordinary Latin word meaning 'to see', the same root that gives us 'vision', 'video' and 'evident'. Early uses carried a strong sense of going to comfort or to check on someone, which is why old texts speak of God or sickness 'visiting' a person. English took the word in during the 1200s through Old French visiter, and over the centuries it settled into the friendly modern meaning of calling on people or places. Because the spelling keeps the single 's' and single 't' of its Latin parent, it stays simple, with no doubled letters to trip a writer.

How the word is built

• vis- (from Latin visere/videre: to go to see, to see)
• -it (verb ending)