Verdict

How to spell verdict

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce verdict

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does verdict mean?

1. nounA decision or judgement, especially the formal finding of a jury at the end of a trial.

Verdict in a sentence

• The jury took three days to reach a verdict.

• The panel announced its verdict after reviewing all the evidence.

Where does verdict come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin phrase vere dictum, which literally meant 'truly said' or 'a true statement': vere meant 'truly' (from verus, 'true') and dictum meant 'a thing said' (from dicere, 'to say'). Medieval lawyers fused these into the Latin veredictum, the formal pronouncement a jury delivered after weighing the evidence. The term passed into Anglo-Norman French as verdit before settling into Middle English, where the spelling drifted back toward its Latin roots to give us 'verdict'. The 'dict' fragment is the same one found in 'dictate', 'predict', and 'contradict', all built on the idea of speaking or saying. Remembering that a verdict is something 'truly said' helps fix the -dict ending rather than a tempting -dic or -det.

How the word is built

• ver- (true, from Latin verus)
• dict (say/speak, from Latin dicere)
• -t