Appellate

How to spell appellate

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce appellate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does appellate mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or having the power to hear appeals against the decisions of a lower court.

Appellate in a sentence

• The case moved to the appellate court after the initial verdict was challenged.

• Her firm specialises in appellate practice, drafting briefs for higher courts.

Where does appellate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a legal adjective drawn straight from the Latin verb appellare, which meant 'to address, to call upon, or to entreat'. That verb was formed from the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' or 'toward', joined to a root tied to driving or calling, and over time appellare came to describe the act of formally calling on a higher authority for a decision. The same Latin source gave English the everyday word 'appeal', and the legal sense of taking a case to a higher court grew directly out of that idea of calling upward. The adjective form appellate, meaning 'concerned with appeals', entered English legal usage in the seventeenth century, modelled on Latin appellatus, the past participle of appellare. The double 'l' and the unstressed final 'ate' are the spelling traps, both inherited from the Latin stem, and remembering its kinship with 'appeal' helps fix the second 'p' and the 'pell' in place.

How the word is built

• ap- (to, from ad-)
• pell (from appellare: to call upon, address)
• -ate (adjective suffix)