Accuse
verbTo charge someone with a fault, crime, or wrongdoing.
How to spell accuse
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce accuse
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does accuse mean?
- verbTo charge someone with a fault, crime, or wrongdoing.
Accuse in a sentence
-
The manager was quick to accuse a junior employee of the error.
-
It would be unfair to accuse him without any real evidence.
Where does accuse come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word comes from the Latin verb accusare, meaning 'to call to account' or 'to bring a charge against someone'. It was built from the prefix ad-, meaning 'toward' or 'against', and the noun causa, which meant 'cause' but in legal settings specifically meant 'a lawsuit' or 'a legal case'. So at its root, to accuse someone literally meant to bring a case against them. English borrowed the word in the 1300s through Old French acuser, and that French stage is why the spelling kept a single c after the doubled one and ended in -use rather than the Latin -usare. The same causa root still sits inside the everyday word 'cause' and the legal term 'accusative', which links the spelling back to its courtroom origins.
How the word is built
- ac- (variant of ad-: toward, against)
- cuse (from Latin causa: cause, lawsuit, legal case)
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.