Guarantee

How to spell guarantee

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce guarantee

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does guarantee mean?

1. nounA formal promise that something will be done or that a product will be repaired or replaced if it fails.
2. verbTo promise firmly that something will happen or be provided.

Guarantee in a sentence

• noun

  The washing machine came with a two-year guarantee against faults.

• verb

  The builders guarantee their work for a full decade.

• noun

  There is no guarantee that the flight will leave on time.

• verb

  We cannot guarantee a refund without the original packaging.

Where does guarantee come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Old French garant, meaning a warrant, a protector, or one who vouches for something, a word the French in turn took from a Germanic root related to the idea of watching over or defending (the same family that gave English 'warrant' and 'ward'). English already had 'warrant' from the Norman-French form with an initial w, so when the Spanish and Italian forms with an initial g entered European commerce, English ended up with a doubled vocabulary and adopted 'guarantee' in the early 1600s for the act of pledging security. The spelling is the great trap here: the silent u after the g (preserving the hard sound) and the final double e both come from the French and Romance shaping of the word. Originally it could mean the person who gives the pledge as well as the pledge itself, which is why the legal term 'guarantor' still survives alongside it. The everyday commercial sense, a maker's promise to repair or replace faulty goods, grew out of that older sense of standing surety for another.

How the word is built

• guarant- (from Old French garant: a warrant, protector)
• -ee (suffix forming noun/verb)