Acknowledgement

How to spell acknowledgement

15 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce acknowledgement

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does acknowledgement mean?

1. nounThe act of recognising, accepting, or admitting the truth or existence of something.

Acknowledgement in a sentence

• The author included a warm acknowledgement of her research assistants.

• The company sent an acknowledgement of receipt for every online order.

Where does acknowledgement come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows out of the verb 'acknowledge', which appeared in late Middle English around the 1400s as a fusion of two older pieces. The core is the Middle English verb 'knowlechen', meaning 'to recognise or admit', itself built on 'knowledge' from Old English 'cnawlece', the act of knowing. To that an intensifying prefix 'a-' (later spelled 'ac-' under the influence of Latin patterns like 'ad-', meaning 'to') was attached, giving the sense of fully recognising or owning up to something. The abstract noun was then created by adding the French-derived suffix '-ment', which English uses to turn a verb into the name of its action or result. The optional 'e' that British and Canadian writers keep before '-ment' survives because the base word 'acknowledge' ends in a soft 'g' that needs the 'e' to stay soft, and dropping it (as American usage prefers) is exactly the small inconsistency that makes this word a frequent spelling trap.

How the word is built

• ac- (intensive/onto prefix)
• knowledge (recognition, what one knows)
• -ment (noun-forming suffix denoting the act or result)