Visitation

How to spell visitation

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce visitation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does visitation mean?

1. nounA formal or official visit, especially one made for inspection or supervision.
2. nounThe legal right of a parent to spend time with a child who lives with the other parent.
3. nounA supernatural appearance, or a calamity regarded as sent by a higher power.

Visitation in a sentence

• The inspector scheduled a visitation to the care home for next week.

• The court granted him weekend visitation with his two children.

• The villagers spoke of a ghostly visitation in the old chapel.

• The bishop's annual visitation to the parish lasted three days.

• Their custody agreement set out a detailed visitation schedule.

• The storm was described in the diary as a visitation of divine anger.

Where does visitation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb visitare, a frequentative form of visere meaning 'to go to see' or 'to inspect', which itself grew out of videre, 'to see'. From the act of seeing developed the idea of calling on someone formally, and the noun visitatio described an official or ceremonial visit. English took the word in through Old French visitacion in the 1300s, when it carried a strongly religious flavour: it described a visit by a person of authority, such as a bishop inspecting a parish, and also an appearance or affliction sent by God. Over time the word broadened into the cooler legal and administrative senses we use today, while keeping its older sense of a supernatural or fateful arrival. The same videre root sits inside everyday relatives like 'vision', 'visible', and 'visit', and remembering that the core is 'visit' plus '-ation' is the simplest way to keep the spelling steady.

How the word is built

• visit- (from Latin visitare: to go to see)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix denoting an action or process)