Accomplice

How to spell accomplice

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce accomplice

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does accomplice mean?

1. nounA person who knowingly helps another commit a crime or wrongful act.

Accomplice in a sentence

• The cashier was charged as an accomplice in the robbery.

• Detectives believe the driver acted as an accomplice to the burglars.

Where does accomplice come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived from Old French complice, meaning an associate or partner, which descended from the Late Latin complex, complicem, literally 'closely folded together' and so 'tightly bound to another'. That Latin form combined com- 'together' with the verb plicare 'to fold', the same root that gives us 'complicated' and 'pliable'. English first used the bare form 'complice' in the fifteenth century, but the modern spelling grew out of a slip of the ear: people heard 'a complice' and reanalysed it as 'an accomplice', much as 'a napron' became 'an apron'. By the sixteenth century the inflated form with the doubled c had settled in, narrowing in sense to a partner specifically in wrongdoing. That accidental front-loaded 'ac-' is exactly the spelling trap, since the word looks as if it should begin like 'accompany' yet has nothing to do with it.

How the word is built

• ac- (prosthetic a-, originally the article 'a')
• complice (associate, from Latin complex: closely connected, from com- 'together'
• plicare 'to fold')