Litigation

How to spell litigation

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce litigation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does litigation mean?

1. nounThe process of taking a dispute to court or resolving it through legal proceedings.

Litigation in a sentence

• The company spent years in costly litigation over the patent.

• Both parties settled out of court to avoid lengthy litigation.

Where does litigation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin litigare, meaning 'to go to law' or 'to carry on a dispute', which was itself formed from lis (whose stem is litis), meaning 'a lawsuit' or 'a quarrel', combined with agere, meaning 'to drive, do, or conduct'. So at its root the word literally pictures the act of driving a quarrel forward through the courts. English took the related noun form through the Latin litigatio, and 'litigation' settled into use in the early 1600s with its current legal meaning of conducting a lawsuit. The same lis root sits inside 'litigant' (a party to a suit) and 'litigious' (eager to sue), while agere is the busy ancestor of 'agent', 'action', and 'agitate'. The spelling trap is the quiet middle: a single t in 'liti', a hard g, and the unstressed schwa in the '-ation' ending.

How the word is built

• litig- (from Latin litigare: to go to law, dispute)
• -ation (noun of action)