Other forms: developments
Development is growth and change into something fuller or further along. A baby's development month by month; the development of a plan from a scribble on a napkin into a schedule with dates on it.
The word does several jobs. In business and software, development is the work of building something: a drug in development, a development team, four years of development before anyone saw it. In the news, a development is a new event in a running story — "we will bring you developments as they come in". In property, a development is the new houses themselves as well as the act of building them: a development beside the canal. Economics adds developing countries and development aid. The verb is develop, the person is a developer, the adjective is developmental. One point of grammar: development is uncountable when it means growth, and countable when it means a piece of news or an estate of new houses.
1noundevelopmentThe process of growing or changing into a fuller, more advanced form.~40%
“Sleep matters enormously for a child's development.”
2nounworkThe work of designing and building something new.~56%
“The game spent four years in development and still shipped broken.”
3nouneventA new event that changes a situation.~2%
“There has been a development: the seller wants to meet tomorrow.”
4noungroupA group of newly built houses or flats, or the business of building them.~2%
“They bought a flat on a development at the edge of town.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 19 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
development is a process of change.
Development came into English from French développement in the middle of the eighteenth century, and behind that stands Old French desvelopemens, an "unrolling". The picture is a bundle being unwrapped: the thing was already there, wound up tight, and time takes the covering off. That is still what the word does when a child develops, or a photograph, or a plot.
Old French
desvelopemens — unrolling
French
développement
English, today
development
From French développement, from Old French desvelopemens (“unrolling”). by surface analysis, develop + -ment. 1756.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA