Tort

How to spell tort

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tort

What does tort mean?

1. nounA civil wrong, other than a breach of contract, for which an injured party can claim damages.

Tort in a sentence

• The law of tort governs claims for negligence and personal injury.

• Her firm specialises in tort litigation arising from defective products.

Where does tort come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin verb torquere, meaning 'to twist' or 'to wrench', whose past participle was tortus, literally 'twisted'. In Medieval Latin the noun tortum came to mean 'a wrong' or 'an injustice', the underlying idea being that a wrongful act is something crooked or twisted away from what is right. English borrowed it through Old French tort in the medieval period, where it likewise meant 'harm' or 'injustice'. By the later Middle Ages it had narrowed in English law to its modern technical meaning: a civil wrong, distinct from a crime or a breach of contract, for which a person can sue for damages. The same twisting root survives in everyday relatives such as 'torture', 'contort', and 'torque', and remembering that 'twisted' sense helps fix the short spelling, with no silent letters and no echo of its homophone 'taught'.

How the word is built

• tort (from Latin tortus: twisted, wrong)