Sacrament

How to spell sacrament

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce sacrament

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sacrament mean?

1. nounA formal Christian religious rite regarded as conferring or symbolising divine grace, such as baptism or communion.

Sacrament in a sentence

• The priest explained that baptism is the first sacrament a Christian receives.

• In many churches, marriage is treated as a holy sacrament rather than a mere contract.

Where does sacrament come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin sacramentum, which originally named a sum of money deposited in a temple by parties to a lawsuit, and later came to mean a solemn oath or pledge, especially the oath of loyalty that a Roman soldier swore on enlisting. That noun was built on the verb sacrare, 'to consecrate' or 'to set apart as holy', which in turn rests on the adjective sacer, meaning 'sacred'. Early Christian writers in Latin adopted sacramentum to render the Greek mysterion, 'mystery', applying it to the sacred rites of the Church. English took the word in around the twelfth century through Old French, and the spelling preserves that Latin root sacr- intact, which is the useful anchor: it begins like 'sacred', not 'secre-'. The same sacer family lives on in 'sacred', 'sacrifice' and 'consecrate'.

How the word is built

• sacr- (from Latin sacer: holy, sacred)
• -ment (noun-forming suffix)