Prove

How to spell prove

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce prove

What does prove mean?

1. verbTo show that something is true or correct by means of evidence or argument.
2. verbTo let bread dough rise before baking, so the yeast can work.

Prove in a sentence

• The receipts prove that the payment was made on time.

• Leave the dough to prove in a warm corner of the kitchen.

• She could not prove where she had been that evening.

• The recipe says to prove the loaf for an hour before baking.

Where does prove come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb probare, which meant 'to test', 'to try out', or 'to find good', and which was itself built on the adjective probus, meaning 'good', 'honest', or 'upright'. The original idea was that you established the worth of something by putting it to the test, so a thing was 'proved' once it had been examined and found sound. English took the word in through Old French prover during the medieval period, and from the start it carried both the sense of demonstrating truth and the older sense of testing or trying. That testing sense survives in baking, where dough is 'proved', and in the familiar saying that the exception 'proves' (tests) the rule. The same probare root also gives us 'probe', 'probation', and 'probable', which is a useful reminder that the middle is spelled with a single 'o' and the word ends in a quiet 'e'.

How the word is built

• prov- (from Latin probare: to test, to find good)
• -e