Forensic

How to spell forensic

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce forensic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does forensic mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the use of scientific methods and techniques in the investigation of crime or in legal proceedings.

Forensic in a sentence

• The forensic team examined the bloodstains found at the scene.

• A forensic accountant traced the missing funds through several shell companies.

Where does forensic come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin forensis, meaning 'of the forum' or 'belonging to the public square', built on forum, the open marketplace at the heart of a Roman town. The forum was not only a place of trade but the setting where legal cases were argued and public business was conducted, so forensis came to carry the sense of 'pertaining to a court of law' or 'suitable for public debate'. English adopted the word in the seventeenth century, at first describing the art of argument and rhetoric used in legal proceedings. Over time, and especially through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it narrowed toward the modern association with the scientific investigation of crime, as in forensic medicine and forensic evidence. The same forum root survives in the everyday word 'forum' itself, and remembering that link explains the otherwise puzzling 'foren' spelling rather than a 'forren' or 'foreign' look.

How the word is built

• forens- (from Latin forensis: of the public forum, of the courts)
• -ic (adjective suffix)