Negligence

How to spell negligence

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce negligence

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does negligence mean?

1. nounFailure to take proper care over something, especially a duty that causes harm or loss.

Negligence in a sentence

• The report blamed the accident on management negligence.

• The patient sued the clinic for negligence after the wrong dosage.

Where does negligence come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Negligence travels back to the Latin verb neglegere, meaning 'to disregard' or 'not to pick up', formed from the negative particle nec or neg ('not') joined to legere, the verb 'to gather, pick out, or choose'. The literal sense was therefore the failure to gather up or attend to something, which is exactly the modern flavour of carelessness or inattention. From that verb came the noun negligentia, 'heedlessness', which passed into Old French as negligence and arrived in English in the 1300s. The same legere root quietly underlies a surprising family of English words, including 'collect', 'elect', and 'lecture', all of which involve choosing or gathering in some way. For the speller, it helps to notice the buried 'lig' spelling rather than the sound it makes, since the unstressed middle of the word is where the letters tend to slip.

How the word is built

• neg- (not)
• lig (from Latin legere: to gather, pick, choose)
• -ence (noun suffix)