Felon

How to spell felon

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce felon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does felon mean?

1. nounA person who has been convicted of a serious crime, known in law as a felony.

Felon in a sentence

• The convicted felon was sentenced to ten years in prison.

• As a felon, he found it hard to secure steady employment after his release.

Where does felon come from?

Language of origin: French

Felon came into English in the 1200s from Old French felon, an adjective and noun meaning 'wicked', 'evil', or 'a villain'. That word derives from the Medieval Latin fello (in its inflected form fellonem), a term for a scoundrel or traitor whose deeper origin is genuinely uncertain; suggestions have ranged from a root meaning 'one who deceives' to far more colourful folk explanations that scholars no longer accept. In early use it described a thoroughly bad or treacherous person before it narrowed into the legal sense we know today, namely someone who has committed a serious crime. The related noun 'felony' followed the same path and named the grave class of offences that sit above minor misdemeanours. The spelling has stayed close to the French original, which is why it keeps the single 'l' and the schwa-sounding '-on' ending rather than anything doubled.

How the word is built

• felon (from Old French felon: wicked person, villain)
• no suffix