Impeach

How to spell impeach

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce impeach

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does impeach mean?

1. verbTo bring a formal charge of serious misconduct against a holder of public office.
2. verbTo cast serious doubt on someone's honesty, accuracy, or credibility.

Impeach in a sentence

• The legislature voted to impeach the governor over the corruption findings.

• The lawyer tried to impeach the witness by exposing earlier lies.

• Opposition members threatened to impeach the president for abuse of power.

• New evidence served to impeach the reliability of the report.

Where does impeach come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes through Old French empechier, meaning 'to hinder, impede, or catch', which descended from the Late Latin impedicare, 'to fetter or entangle'. That Latin verb was built from in- ('in, into') and pedica, a 'fetter' or 'shackle' for the foot, itself rooted in pes, pedis meaning 'foot'. So the literal idea was to catch someone by the foot, to trip them up or hold them fast, which is why the very close relative 'impede' still carries the plain sense of slowing something down. English adopted impeach in the 1300s in the general sense of hindering or accusing, and by the late 1500s it had narrowed to the formal legal meaning of charging a public official with serious misconduct. The silent first syllable and the unexpected -each ending (matching 'peach' the fruit, though entirely unrelated) are the spelling traps worth remembering.

How the word is built

• im- (variant of in-: in, into)
• -peach (from Latin pedica: fetter, shackle, from pes/pedis: foot)