Aforementioned

How to spell aforementioned

14 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce aforementioned

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aforementioned mean?

1. adjectiveMentioned or referred to earlier in the same piece of writing or speech.

Aforementioned in a sentence

• The aforementioned clauses of the contract take precedence over any later amendment.

• All aforementioned employees must complete the new safety training by Friday.

Where does aforementioned come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word stitches together the old adverb 'afore', meaning 'before' or 'in front', which descends from Old English 'onforan' (literally 'on before'), and the verb 'mention', which came into English through Old French 'mencion' from the Latin 'mentio', meaning 'a calling to mind' or 'a making known'. The Latin 'mentio' itself traces back to the root 'mens', meaning 'mind', the same source that gives us 'mental' and 'comment'. By the time 'aforementioned' was assembled, around the seventeenth century, 'afore' had already faded from ordinary speech in favour of the plainer 'before', surviving mainly in fixed legal and clerical compounds such as 'aforesaid' and 'aforethought'. The word settled firmly into formal, legal, and administrative English, where it signals something named earlier in the same document. Its spelling trap lies in remembering that the silent-feeling first syllable is 'afore', a single smooth word, not 'a fore' or 'a four'.

How the word is built

• afore- (before, beforehand)
• mention (to refer to)
• -ed (past participle/adjective suffix)