Voltage

How to spell voltage

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce voltage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does voltage mean?

1. nounThe electrical force or pressure in a circuit, measured in volts.

Voltage in a sentence

• The electrician checked the voltage before touching the wiring.

• High voltage in that cable can be lethal if mishandled.

Where does voltage come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word is built on 'volt', the unit of electrical force, which was coined in honour of the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (1745 to 1827), the inventor of the first true battery. His surname was attached to the unit by international agreement in the 1880s, and English then added the ending '-age', a suffix borrowed long ago from French and ultimately Latin that turns a base into a noun naming an amount or measurable quantity (as in 'mileage' and 'acreage'). So 'voltage' literally means the amount measured in volts, that is, the electrical pressure pushing a current through a circuit. The word entered general use in the late nineteenth century as household and industrial electricity spread. Because the root is a real person's name, the spelling keeps the plain 'volt' intact, and the only thing to remember is the soft '-age' ending pronounced 'ij'.

How the word is built

• volt (unit named after Alessandro Volta)
• -age (noun suffix indicating a measurable quantity or amount)