Relevant

How to spell relevant

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce relevant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does relevant mean?

1. adjectiveClosely connected with or having a meaningful bearing on the matter being considered.

Relevant in a sentence

• Please attach any relevant documents to your application.

• The lawyer argued that the witness statement was not relevant to the case.

Where does relevant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin relevare, which literally meant 'to raise up' or 'to lighten' a burden, built from the prefix re- and the verb levare 'to lift', the same root that gives English 'lever', 'elevate' and 'levity'. In medieval Latin its present participle relevantem developed a more abstract legal sense of 'bearing upon' or 'helping to support' a case, the idea being that a fact lifts or assists the matter at hand. It entered English in the early 1500s, at first largely in Scottish legal use, meaning 'pertinent' or 'connected to the question'. From the law it spread into general use to describe anything that has a meaningful bearing on the subject being discussed. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed ending: it is -ant, not -ent, and remembering the lifting root lev can anchor the middle of the word.

How the word is built

• re- (intensive/again)
• lev (from Latin levare: to raise, lift)
• -ant (adjective suffix)