Disclaimer

How to spell disclaimer

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disclaimer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disclaimer mean?

1. nounA statement that denies or limits legal responsibility for something.
2. nounA formal act of renouncing a legal right, title, or claim.

Disclaimer in a sentence

• The product label carried a small disclaimer about possible allergens.

• The heir signed a disclaimer giving up any right to the estate.

• Every financial newsletter ends with a disclaimer noting that past returns do not guarantee future results.

• The lawyer prepared a disclaimer so the beneficiary could refuse the inheritance.

Where does disclaimer come from?

Language of origin: French

The word traces back to the Latin verb clamare, which literally meant 'to cry out' or 'to call loudly'; the same root gives English 'claim', 'exclaim', and 'clamour'. In Old French this became clamer 'to call or claim', and adding the reversing prefix des- produced desclamer, meaning to renounce or give up a claim. English took this in through Anglo-French legal language in the late 1300s and 1400s, where 'disclaim' described formally surrendering a right or denying a connection. The noun 'disclaimer', built with the agent suffix -er, originally named the legal act of renouncing a claim before broadening into the modern sense of a printed statement that limits responsibility. The spelling trap is the buried 'ai' from the old 'claim' root, since the unstressed second syllable sounds like a plain 'ay' and tempts writers to drop the silent letters.

How the word is built

• dis- (away, reversal)
• claim (from Latin clamare: to cry out, to call)
• -er (noun suffix)