Lawsuit

How to spell lawsuit

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lawsuit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lawsuit mean?

1. nounA claim or dispute brought before a court of law for a decision.

Lawsuit in a sentence

• The company settled the lawsuit before it reached trial.

• Filing a lawsuit over the faulty product cost her thousands in fees.

Where does lawsuit come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a compound formed in English from two older elements. The first half, 'law', comes from the Old Norse 'lagu', meaning something laid down or fixed, which entered Old English as 'lagu' during the period of Norse settlement; it is related to the idea of something 'laid' in place. The second half, 'suit', travelled from the Latin 'sequi', meaning 'to follow', through the Old French 'suite', and originally described the act of following or pursuing a claim before a court, which is why we still 'sue' someone. The two parts were joined into 'lawsuit' by around the sixteenth century to name a single legal proceeding pursued in a court. Because the word simply stacks two familiar everyday words together, the spelling trap is small: writers occasionally split it into two words or drop the second 'u' under the influence of how 'suit' sounds.

How the word is built

• law (legal system, rule)
• suit (a legal action, from sue)