The various senses of affect, each followed by a sentence demonstrating them, follow:Ī noun meaning “mental state”: “In his report, the psychiatrist, noting his lack of expression or other signs of emotion, described his affect as flat.”Ī verb meaning “to produce an effect, to influence”: “I knew that my opinion would affect her choice, so I deliberately withheld it.”Ī verb meaning “to pretend” or “to put on”: “She tried to affect an air of nonchalance, though she was visibly agitated.”

What will be the effect of closing Main Street?īelow you will find less common meanings and related or derivative words. The loss of his father affected him profoundly.Įffect is usually a noun, meaning the result of an action. Affect, derived from affectus, from the Latin word afficere, “to do something to, act on,” is easily conflated with effect, borrowed from Anglo-French, ultimately stemming from the Latin word effectus, from efficere, “to bring about.” What’s the difference between affect and effect?Īffect is usually a verb, meaning to influence or act upon.

Among the pairs of words writers often confuse, affect and effect might be the most perplexing, perhaps because their meanings are so similar.

Effect on me