Testimony

How to spell testimony

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce testimony

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does testimony mean?

1. nounA formal statement, especially one given by a witness under oath, or evidence in support of a fact or claim.

Testimony in a sentence

• The witness gave detailed testimony about the events of that night.

• Her recovery is a powerful testimony to the skill of the surgeons.

Where does testimony come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin testimonium, meaning 'evidence' or 'a witness statement', which was built on testis, the Latin word for a witness. The same testis root sits behind a whole family of legal English words, including 'testify', 'testament', and 'attest', all of which involve bearing witness or making a solemn declaration. English picked the word up in the 1300s, originally in religious contexts where 'the testimony' referred to the divine commandments, before it broadened to mean any formal statement given under oath. The closing -mony is a noun-forming suffix that also appears in words like 'ceremony' and 'matrimony', which is worth remembering because the unstressed middle vowels make the spelling tricky. Knowing that it ends in -mony rather than -money helps fix the form in mind, since the word has nothing to do with money despite the similar sound.

How the word is built

• testi- (from testis: witness)
• -mony (noun suffix denoting a state or result)