Appeal

How to spell appeal

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce appeal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does appeal mean?

1. verbTo make a serious or urgent request for something needed.
2. verbTo be attractive or interesting to someone.
3. nounA formal request for a higher court or authority to review a decision.

Appeal in a sentence

• verb

  The charity will appeal for donations after the flooding.

• verb

  Quiet weekends in the countryside really appeal to me.

• noun

  Her lawyer filed an appeal against the verdict.

• verb

  Police continue to appeal for witnesses to the accident.

• verb

  The bright packaging is designed to appeal to younger shoppers.

• noun

  The council rejected his planning appeal last month.

Where does appeal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word travelled into English from the Latin verb appellare, which meant 'to address, to call upon, or to entreat'. That verb was formed from ad, meaning 'to' or 'toward', joined to pellere, 'to drive or push', so the literal idea was of driving someone toward you with your words. It reached English through Old French apeler in the 1300s, at first carrying the legal sense of formally calling on a higher authority to review a decision. From that courtroom use it broadened to mean any earnest request and, later still, the notion of something that draws or attracts us. The same pellere root drives a whole family of relatives, including 'compel', 'expel', and 'repel', which is a handy reminder that the second syllable is built on '-pel' even though the spelling here doubles to '-peal'.

How the word is built

• ap- (from ad-: to, toward)
• -peal (from Latin pellere: to drive, push)