Tribute

How to spell tribute

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tribute

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tribute mean?

1. nounAn act, statement, or gift that shows respect, gratitude, or admiration for someone.
2. nounA payment made by one ruler or state to another as a sign of submission or for protection.

Tribute in a sentence

• The concert was held as a tribute to the late founder of the company.

• The conquered cities were forced to send an annual tribute to the empire.

• Colleagues paid tribute to her thirty years of service at the firm.

• The king demanded tribute in gold and grain from the neighbouring provinces.

Where does tribute come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin tributum, meaning 'a thing paid' or 'a tax', which was the past participle of the verb tribuere, meaning 'to allot, to assign, or to pay'. That verb was built on tribus, the word for one of the original divisions of the Roman people, a 'tribe', so the underlying idea was a payment apportioned among the tribes. English took the word in during the 1300s, by way of Old French, first to describe the money or goods that a weaker state was forced to hand over to a stronger one. From that sense of something rendered as a due, the meaning softened over the centuries into the modern idea of an offering of respect or gratitude paid to a person. The shared root still links it to relatives such as 'contribute' and 'distribute', and remembering tribuere ('to pay') explains the -bute spelling rather than the sound-alike -beaut.

How the word is built

• tribu- (from Latin tribuere: to allot, assign, pay)
• -te (forming the noun tributum)