Petition

How to spell petition

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce petition

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does petition mean?

1. nounA formal written request, often signed by many people, appealing to an authority to take some action.
2. verbTo make a formal written request to an authority, or to appeal earnestly for something.

Petition in a sentence

• noun

  Thousands of residents signed the petition to save the local library.

• verb

  The workers plan to petition the board for better safety equipment.

• noun

  The council agreed to debate the matter once the petition reached ten thousand names.

• verb

  A group of parents decided to petition the school for a later start time.

Where does petition come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Petition comes from the Latin petitionem, the accusative of petitio, meaning 'a request', 'an attack', or 'a candidacy', built on the verb petere, which literally meant 'to seek', 'to aim at', or 'to rush toward'. That same petere root spread widely through English: it sits inside 'compete' (to seek together), 'appetite' (a reaching toward something), 'repeat' (to seek again), and 'impetus' (a driving rush forward). The word arrived in English in the 1300s through Old French peticion, first carrying the religious sense of an earnest prayer or supplication before broadening to the modern idea of a formal written request. The double trap in the spelling is the unstressed first vowel (you hear a schwa, but it is written with an 'e' from petere) and the '-tion' ending, which sounds like 'shun'. Remembering the relatives 'compete' and 'repeat', which keep a visible 'pet', helps fix that opening 'pet' in petition.

How the word is built

• petit- (from Latin petere: to seek, ask, or aim at)
• -ion (noun/action suffix)