Impeached

How to spell impeached

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce impeached

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does impeached mean?

1. verbFormally charged a public official, such as a president or judge, with serious misconduct in office.
2. verbCalled into question or sought to discredit, especially a witness's honesty or the reliability of evidence.

Impeached in a sentence

• The legislature impeached the governor after months of corruption hearings.

• The defence lawyer impeached the witness by exposing earlier contradictory statements.

• Two presidents had already been impeached by the time she wrote her history textbook.

• The audit impeached the accuracy of every figure in the quarterly report.

Where does impeached come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word travels back to the Latin verb impedicare, meaning 'to fetter' or 'to catch by the foot', which was built from in- ('in') and pedica ('a shackle or snare for the foot'), itself from pes, pedis ('foot'). It reached English in the 1300s through the Old French empechier, 'to hinder, impede, or entangle', and at first it simply meant to obstruct or accuse. Over time English speakers blended it in their minds with the unrelated Latin impetere ('to attack'), which nudged the sense toward formal accusation of wrongdoing. By the late 1500s it had settled into its now familiar legal meaning: to bring a charge of serious misconduct against a public official. The same pedica 'foot-shackle' root quietly sits behind 'impede' and 'pedestrian', and the surprising twist is that the fruit 'peach' has nothing to do with it, which is exactly why the spelling can feel deceptive.

How the word is built

• im- (in, from Latin in-)
• peach (from Latin pedica, a shackle for the foot)
• -ed (past tense suffix)