Testimonies

How to spell testimonies

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce testimonies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does testimonies mean?

1. nounFormal statements or declarations, especially those given under oath or as evidence of someone's experience.

Testimonies in a sentence

• The court reviewed the witness testimonies before reaching a verdict.

• The charity website features testimonies from people it has helped.

Where does testimonies come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin testimonium, which meant 'evidence' or 'a witness statement', built on testis, the Latin noun for a witness. The root testis literally pictured a third person standing by to observe a transaction, and it survives in many English relatives such as 'testify', 'testament', 'attest', and 'contest'. English took the singular 'testimony' in the late fourteenth century, partly through Old French and partly straight from Latin, originally in the religious sense of bearing solemn witness. The plural 'testimonies' follows the ordinary English rule for nouns ending in a consonant plus y: the y becomes ies, which is the spelling trap most adults pause over. Keeping the i in '-mony' (rather than slipping to an 'a') is the other point worth remembering, since the suffix is the Latin -monium, not the unrelated 'money'.

How the word is built

• testi- (from Latin testis: witness)
• -mony (-monium, noun suffix of state or condition)
• -es (plural, y changes to ies)