Subpoena

How to spell subpoena

8 letters · 3 syllables

11 of the 40 people asked to spell subpoena in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

The most common mistake is subpeona. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

subpeona subpoena

What people typed instead

• subpeona8 people

How to pronounce subpoena

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does subpoena mean?

1. nounA formal written order requiring a person to attend court or produce documents, under threat of penalty.
2. verbTo order someone, by formal court command, to appear or produce evidence.

Subpoena in a sentence

• noun

  The lawyer served a subpoena on the reluctant witness.

• verb

  The committee voted to subpoena the former director.

• noun

  The bank received a subpoena demanding the account records.

• verb

  Prosecutors can subpoena phone records during an investigation.

Where does subpoena come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin phrase sub poena, meaning 'under penalty', and it preserves that two-word origin in its odd spelling. Medieval English legal writs were composed in Latin, and the document that ordered a witness to appear in court opened with the words 'sub poena', warning that failure to comply would bring a penalty. Over time those opening words were fused into a single noun naming the order itself, a process that gave us the term as it entered English legal usage in the 1400s. The root poena, meaning 'penalty' or 'punishment', is the same ancestor that gives us 'penal', 'penalty', and even 'pain'. The silent 'b' and the unexpected 'oe' both survive because the word was lifted whole from Latin rather than reshaped by English habits, which is exactly why fluent writers stumble over it.

How the word is built

• sub- (under)
• poena (penalty, punishment); from the Latin phrase sub poena 'under penalty'

People who misspell subpoena also struggle with

Of the Spelling Garden players who got subpoena wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.

• idiosyncrasy 80% of them got it wrong
• connoisseur 73% of them got it wrong
• bourgeois 55% of them got it wrong