Waiver

How to spell waiver

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce waiver

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does waiver mean?

1. nounThe voluntary giving up of a legal right or claim, or the document that records this.

Waiver in a sentence

• Every participant signed a liability waiver before the climbing session.

• The bank granted a fee waiver on her overdrawn account.

Where does waiver come from?

Language of origin: French

Waiver comes from the legal Anglo-French (Anglo-Norman) noun weyver, meaning the act of giving something up, which was built on the verb weyver, 'to abandon' or 'to relinquish'. That verb in turn descends from Old French gaiver or guesver, meaning 'to abandon' or 'to let lapse into ownerless property', and it is closely related to the word that gave us 'waif', originally an item or person abandoned and left without an owner. English took the verb in as 'waive' during the medieval period, and lawyers used the French-style noun ending to name the action itself, so the formal document came to be called a waiver. The spelling keeps the -er ending typical of these Anglo-French legal nouns, which is the very thing that separates it from its sound-alike 'waver' (to hesitate or wobble), a quite unrelated word of Germanic origin. Remembering that a waiver is something you actively waive helps lock in the -ai- and the final -er.

How the word is built

• waive (to relinquish or give up)
• -er (Anglo-French legal noun suffix forming a noun of the action)