Other forms: developed, developing, develops
To develop is to grow step by step into something bigger or better. A seed develops into a tree, a friendship develops over months of small favours, three streets develop into a suburb.
You also develop things on purpose: a company develops a new drug, a coder develops an app, a runner develops speed across a season. Things you never chose can develop as well, like a cough, a crack in the ceiling, or a taste for very strong coffee. In photography, to develop film is to bathe it in chemicals until the hidden picture appears, which is where developer and developing tray come from. The noun is development, and it does three jobs: personal development, a housing development, the latest developments in a news story. Watch the spelling, because there is only one p in developed and developing, unlike stopped and stopping.
1verbdevelopTo grow or change gradually into something larger, stronger or more advanced.~23%
“Their argument developed into a full quarrel by the end of the meal.”
2verbcreateTo build or work something up over a period of time.~46%
“The team spent two years developing the software before anyone saw it.”
3verbbeginTo begin to have something, such as an illness, a habit or a fault.~27%
“He developed a limp in the weeks after the accident.”
4verbtreatTo treat photographic film with chemicals so that the pictures appear.~2%
“She developed the film in a darkroom lit by one red bulb.”
5verbhousesTo build houses, shops or offices on a piece of land.~2%
“A company bought the old docks and is developing the whole waterfront.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 21 sentences found in the wild and placed 21 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Develop came from French developper, and before that Old French desveloper: des- undoing whatever veloper, to wrap, had done. To develop was to unwrap, the same wrapping idea that sits inside envelope. Behind it stands a Proto-Indo-European root werb-, to turn or bend, the motion of winding cloth around something. What we now do with a business plan began as pulling the covers off.
French
développer
English, today
develop
Built from
Borrowed from French développer. Borrowed from French développer, from Middle French desveloper, from Old French desveloper, from des- + veloper (“to wrap, wrap up”) (compare Italian sviluppare, roa-oit - alternative form goluppare (“to wrap”)) from Vulgar Latin vloppō, wloppō (“to wrap”) ultimately from Proto-Germanic wrappaną, wlappaną (“to wrap, roll up, turn, wind”), from Proto-Indo-European werb- (“to turn, bend”) [http://www.wordnik.com/words/envelop]. Akin to Middle English wlappen (“to wrap, fold”) (Modern English lap (“to wrap, involve, fold”)), Middle English wrappen (“to wrap”), Middle Dutch lappen (“to wrap up, embrace”), dialectal Danish vravle (“to wind, twist”), Middle Low German wrempen (“to wrinkle, scrunch, distort”), Old English wearp* (“warp”). The word acquired its modern meaning from the 17th-century belief that an egg contains the animal in miniature and matures by growing larger and shedding its envelopes.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA