Treaty

How to spell treaty

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce treaty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does treaty mean?

1. nounA formal, legally binding agreement made between nations or sovereign parties.

Treaty in a sentence

• The two countries signed a treaty to end the conflict.

• The trade treaty lowered tariffs on imported goods.

Where does treaty come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin tractatus, meaning 'a handling' or 'a discussion', which was the past participle of tractare, 'to handle, manage, or deal with'. That verb was itself a frequentative form of trahere, 'to drag or draw', so the underlying image is of drawing matters out and working through them. English took the word in the 1300s from Old French traité, a written agreement or formal discussion, and at first it could mean any reasoned treatment of a subject as well as a binding pact between parties. Over time the legal and diplomatic sense, a formal agreement between nations, came to dominate while the older 'written treatise' sense drifted off into the separate word 'treatise'. The same Latin trahere root also feeds 'tract', 'trace', and 'attract', and the single t before the -y ending is the small trap, since the related verb 'treat' tempts some writers toward doubling.

How the word is built

• treat- (from Latin tractare: to handle, deal with)
• -y (noun suffix forming a thing produced)