Appraisal

How to spell appraisal

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce appraisal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does appraisal mean?

1. nounAn act of assessing or estimating the value, quality, or condition of something.
2. nounA formal review of an employee's work performance, usually held at set intervals.

Appraisal in a sentence

• The bank required a professional appraisal before approving the mortgage.

• Her annual appraisal noted strong leadership and consistent results.

• A careful appraisal of the antique clock revealed it was worth far more than expected.

• The manager scheduled each staff appraisal for the final week of the year.

Where does appraisal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Appraisal traces back to the Late Latin verb appretiare, meaning 'to set a price on' or 'to value', which was built from the prefix ad- ('to') and pretium, the Latin word for 'price' or 'worth'. That verb passed into Old French as apreisier, and English adopted it as the verb 'appraise' in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, originally in the sense of fixing a value on goods or property. The noun 'appraisal' itself is a later, largely English formation, adding the noun suffix -al to the verb to name the act or result of valuing something. The same Latin pretium also lies behind 'price', 'precious', and 'appreciate', which is why the idea of worth runs through all of them. The spelling trap is the middle: the 'prais' looks like 'praise' (to commend), and that link is genuine, since praising and pricing both grew from the notion of setting a value, so the -ai- belongs there.

How the word is built

• ap- (to, from Latin ad-)
• prais (value/price, from pretium 'price')
• -al (noun suffix)