Edict

How to spell edict

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce edict

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does edict mean?

1. nounAn official order or proclamation issued by a person or body in authority.

Edict in a sentence

• The king issued an edict banning all foreign trade.

• The council enforced the new edict on water usage during the drought.

Where does edict come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Edict comes from the Latin edictum, meaning 'a proclamation' or 'an order'. That noun was formed from the verb edicere, 'to declare' or 'to proclaim', which combined ex, meaning 'out', with dicere, meaning 'to say' or 'to speak'. An edict was therefore literally something 'spoken out' to the public, the formal announcement of a ruler's will. English took the word up in the Middle Ages, and it shares its dicere root with a whole family of familiar words such as dictate, predict, contradict, and dictionary, all of which carry the sense of saying or telling. The spelling stays close to the Latin original, so the helpful memory hook is that the dict part is the same dict you already write in dictate and predict.

How the word is built

• e- (from ex-, out)
• dict (from dicere: to say, to speak)