What does include mean?
Include means to place something within the scope, composition, or limits of something else. A package may include a particular item; an examination may include several kinds of question; and a statement may include an exception or qualification. The word can also refer to what is covered by a price or total, as when a hotel rate includes breakfast, or to what is taken into account when calculating an amount. Its use with a group is especially common: to include someone in a category means to regard that person as belonging to it, regardless of whether the category is favorable. The word is widely used in British and American English and is suitable for formal and informal contexts. Because include specifies what forms part of a larger whole, it is frequently paired with the contrast exclude, meaning to leave something outside. In careful prose, the precise object is useful: the material may be present, the cost may be covered, or the person may count as part of a category, depending on context.
To have something as part of a whole, collection, category, price, or calculation, or to allow it to be considered.
"The package includes a guide to the exhibition."
Usually transitive; it takes the included item or matter as its object.
Meaning “in” or “including,” especially when referring to profit or income.
"The projected revenue, include a substantial one-time payment."
This use is chiefly associated with business and financial English and is less common than the verb.
The Latin behind include once meant “shut in”: a vivid reminder that what is included is held within something larger.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does include come from?
Include comes from Latin includere, formed from in- meaning “in” and claudere meaning “to close” or “shut.” Its Latin development included the sense of shutting something in and, by extension, taking something in or including it. The word entered English in the early 16th century and developed its modern range of meanings through English usage.
Related word forms
How include is actually used
Include is normally transitive and may take a noun phrase, clause, or participial phrase as its object. It is common in neutral English, though the somewhat formal noun inclusion is preferred in abstract contexts such as research and policy.
Easily confused with include
To include something is to treat it as part of a whole, whereas to exclude something is to leave it outside that whole.