Testament

How to spell testament

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce testament

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does testament mean?

1. nounSomething that serves as clear proof or a tribute to a quality or achievement.
2. nounA person's formal written declaration of how their property should be distributed after death.

Testament in a sentence

• The thriving business is a testament to years of careful planning.

• The solicitor read the last will and testament to the assembled family.

• The bridge still standing after a century is a testament to its engineers.

• He signed his testament in front of two witnesses at the office.

Where does testament come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin testamentum, meaning 'a will' or 'the formal declaration of one's wishes after death', which was built on the verb testari, 'to make a will' or 'to bear witness'. At the root sits testis, the Latin word for a 'witness', the same element that survives in 'testify', 'attest', and 'testimony', and that shared ancestry explains the otherwise puzzling spelling with its central -t-est-. The word entered English in the medieval period through ecclesiastical and legal Latin, where testamentum was used to translate the Greek term for a 'covenant', which is why the two great divisions of the Christian Bible became the Old Testament and the New Testament. From the strict legal sense of a will, English gradually extended the word to mean any solemn proof or evidence of something, as in 'a testament to her hard work'. The enduring link to a witness is the key to remembering the spelling: a testament is something that bears witness.

How the word is built

• test- (from Latin testis: witness)
• -a- (connecting vowel)
• -ment (noun-forming suffix denoting result or means)