Pledge

How to spell pledge

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pledge

What does pledge mean?

1. verbTo make a solemn and binding promise to do something or give something.
2. nounA solemn promise or commitment, or something handed over as security for a debt.

Pledge in a sentence

• verb

  The company will pledge a portion of its profits to the local hospital.

• noun

  She signed a written pledge to repay the loan within a year.

• verb

  Thousands of donors pledge money to the appeal every December.

• noun

  The charity received a generous pledge from an anonymous backer.

Where does pledge come from?

Language of origin: French

The word entered Middle English in the 1300s from Old French plege, which meant a surety, a hostage, or someone who stood as bail for another person. That Old French form traces back through Medieval Latin plebium and the verb plebire, meaning to guarantee or to vouch for, but the deeper root is almost certainly Germanic: it is related to the Frankish and Old High German word pflegan, meaning to take care of or to be answerable for, and survives in the modern German pflegen and Dutch plegen. The original idea was therefore a concrete one of standing as security for a debt or a person, and only later did it broaden into the abstract sense of a solemn promise. The spelling trap is the -dge ending: the soft 'j' sound is written 'dge' after a short vowel, just as in bridge, badge, and judge. Because the journey from Latin through French left a silent 'd' and a silent final 'e', writers sometimes drop one of these letters.

How the word is built

• pledg- (from Old French plege: surety, guarantee)
• -e (silent terminal e after the -dge spelling)