Conviction

How to spell conviction

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce conviction

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does conviction mean?

1. nounA firmly held belief or opinion that one is not easily talked out of.
2. nounA formal declaration by a court that someone is guilty of a criminal offence.

Conviction in a sentence

• She argued her case with real conviction at the meeting.

• The appeal court overturned his conviction after new evidence appeared.

• His conviction that honesty pays off has guided his whole career.

• A previous conviction for fraud disqualified her from the role.

Where does conviction come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Conviction comes from the Latin convincere, which combined the intensifying prefix com- ('thoroughly') with vincere, the verb meaning 'to conquer' or 'to overcome'. In legal Latin convincere came to mean 'to prove guilty' or 'to overcome by argument', the idea being that one side defeats the other through evidence. The noun convictio described that act of proving or being proven wrong, and English took the word in during the late 1400s, at first in the courtroom sense of being found guilty. From there it broadened to mean a settled belief held so firmly that argument cannot overturn it, as though the mind itself had been won over. The same vincere root sits inside 'victory', 'convince', and 'evict', which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the vict you can hear in 'victor', not a vince.

How the word is built

• con- (intensive, from Latin com- 'thoroughly')
• vict (from vincere 'to conquer, prove')
• -ion (noun suffix)