sentence

The story

1. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*sent-“to feel”
2. Latin · derived fromsententia“way of thinking, opinion, sentiment”
3. Middle French · borrowed fromsentence
4. English todaysentence

Borrowed from Middle French sentence, from Latin sententia (“way of thinking, opinion, sentiment”), from sentiēns, present participle of sentiō (“to feel, think”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sent- (“to feel”). Displaced native Old English cwide.

Words from the same roots

First known use, by meaning

• from 14th c. The decision or judgement of a jury or court; a verdict.
• from 14th c. The judicial order for a punishment to be imposed on a person convicted of a crime.
• 14th–19th c. A saying, especially from a great person; a maxim, an apophthegm.
• from 15th c. A grammatically complete series of words consisting of a subject and predicate, even if one or the other is implied. In modern writing, when using, e.g., the Latin, Greek or Cyrillic alphabets, typically beginning with a capital letter and ending with a full stop or other punctuation.
• from 20th c. A formula with no free variables.
• from 20th c. Any of the set of strings that can be generated by a given formal grammar.
• 14th–17th c. One's opinion; manner of thinking.
• from 14th c. A pronounced opinion or judgment on a given question.