Reconcile

How to spell reconcile

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce reconcile

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reconcile mean?

1. verbTo restore friendly relations between people, or to bring conflicting ideas or facts into agreement.
2. verbTo check that two sets of financial records match and to resolve any differences between them.

Reconcile in a sentence

• The mediator helped the two managers reconcile after months of tension.

• Each month the bookkeeper must reconcile the bank statement with the ledger.

• It is hard to reconcile his calm public image with his angry private emails.

• The accountant could not reconcile the receipts with the recorded totals.

Where does reconcile come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb reconciliare, which meant to bring back together or to restore to friendship. It was built from re-, meaning 'again', and conciliare, 'to bring together' or 'to make friendly'. That middle piece traces back to concilium, an assembly or council, formed from com- ('together') and calare ('to call'), so the underlying image is literally calling people together again into one body. English took the word in the late 1300s through French and learned Latin usage, first in the sense of restoring broken friendships, and later extending it to making conflicting accounts or ideas agree. The shared concilium root is also why we have the word 'council', and remembering that link helps fix the soft c in the middle and the quiet -cile ending where the trap usually lies.

How the word is built

• re- (again)
• con- (together)
• cil (from Latin calare/concilium: to call, council)
• -e