Alibi

How to spell alibi

5 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce alibi

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does alibi mean?

1. nounEvidence that a person was somewhere else when an offence was committed, used as a defence.
2. nounAn excuse or justification offered to avoid blame.

Alibi in a sentence

• The suspect produced a solid alibi for the night of the burglary.

• He always had a ready alibi for missing the morning meetings.

• Her colleagues confirmed the alibi that she had been at the office all evening.

• The traffic was her usual alibi for arriving late to work.

Where does alibi come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes straight from Latin alibi, an adverb meaning 'elsewhere' or 'in another place'. It was built from alius, meaning 'other', and ibi, meaning 'there' or 'in that place', so the literal sense was simply 'somewhere other than here'. English took the word in the eighteenth century as a piece of courtroom Latin, where a defendant could plead that he was alibi, that is, in a different place, when the crime was committed. From that legal plea it hardened into a noun naming the defence itself, and later softened in everyday speech into a casual word for any handy excuse. The same alius root survives in 'alias' and 'alien', and remembering that alibi means 'other-place' helps fix the unexpected -bi ending that trips up so many writers.

How the word is built

• ali- (from Latin alius: other)
• -bi (from ibi: there, that place)