Esquire

How to spell esquire

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce esquire

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does esquire mean?

1. nounA courtesy title placed after a man's name in formal writing, ranking just below knight.
2. nounIn the United States, a title appended to the name of a practising lawyer.

Esquire in a sentence

• The wedding invitation was addressed to Thomas Hartley, esquire.

• Once she was admitted to the bar, she added esquire after her name.

• On the old deed the landowner's surname was followed by the title esquire.

• The firm's letterhead listed each partner with the title esquire.

Where does esquire come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the Old French esquier, meaning a 'shield-bearer', which in turn derived from the Late Latin scutarius, a soldier who carried a shield, built on the noun scutum, meaning 'shield'. English adopted it in the later Middle Ages, around the fifteenth century, to describe a young man of good birth who attended and served a knight while training toward knighthood himself. Over time the practical role faded and the word survived as an honorific, a courtesy title ranking just below a knight and later applied broadly to gentlemen on formal correspondence. The same scutum root lies behind 'escutcheon', the shield on a coat of arms, and that shared shield image is a useful hook for remembering the unusual 'squ' spelling in the middle. In the United States the title drifted again to mark a practising attorney, so the one word now carries quite different weight on either side of the Atlantic.

How the word is built

• es- (from Latin scutum: shield)
• -quire (bearer, via Old French esquier: shield-bearer)