Amend

How to spell amend

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce amend

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does amend mean?

1. verbTo make changes to a document, law, or statement in order to correct or improve it.

Amend in a sentence

• The committee voted to amend the contract before signing.

• Parliament can amend the bill at the next reading.

Where does amend come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word travelled into English from the Old French verb amender, which itself came from the Latin emendare, meaning 'to free from fault' or 'to correct'. That Latin verb was built from ex- ('out of') and menda ('a fault, blemish, or error'), so the literal idea was to take the faults out of something. English adopted it in the 1200s, at first with the broad sense of putting right or improving anything that was flawed, whether conduct, a wrong, or a text. Over time it settled into its modern use of formally altering the wording of a law, motion, or document. The closely related scholarly verb 'emend', used for correcting errors in a text, comes from the very same Latin root, which is exactly why the a- versus e- opening trips writers up; remember that the everyday 'amend' begins with an a, as in 'alter'.

How the word is built

• a- (from Latin ex-: out of)
• mend (from menda: fault); literally 'to take out the faults'