Amendment

How to spell amendment

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce amendment

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does amendment mean?

1. nounA formal change, correction, or addition made to a document, law, or agreement.

Amendment in a sentence

• The committee proposed an amendment to the rental contract before signing.

• Parliament debated the amendment for several hours before the vote.

Where does amendment come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb emendare, meaning 'to free from fault' or 'to correct', which was built from e- ('out of') and menda, a 'fault, blemish or error'. The same Latin root sits behind the English verb 'emend', used by editors to mean correcting a text, and the spelling difference between 'emend' and 'amend' reflects two slightly different routes the word took. English took 'amend' through Old French amender during the 1200s, where the e had already softened to a, and the noun 'amendment' followed soon after for the act of correcting or improving something. Over the centuries the word picked up its strong legal and political sense, a formal change proposed to a law, contract, or constitution. Knowing the buried root mend, the same mend as in mending clothes, helps fix the spelling: you are mending a document, so the middle is just plain 'mend'.

How the word is built

• a- (from Latin e-, 'out')
• mend (from menda, 'fault, blemish')
• -ment (noun-forming suffix)