Accuse

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /əˈkjuːz/

Definitions

1. To claim that someone has done something wrong or illegal
2. To state that someone is responsible for a wrongdoing or offense
3. To assert that a person has committed an error or unlawful act

Etymology: The Latin ancestor of "accuse" was a courtroom word. "Accusare" meant to call someone to account, or to bring a lawsuit against them, and it was built from "ad" ("to") and "causa" ("cause, lawsuit, reason"). So at root, to accuse someone was to bring them to the cause, the case, where their conduct would be judged. The same "causa" lies behind "cause" itself, which is why the two words are related. English borrowed the word through Old French "acuser" and Middle English "acusen", and it first appears in writing around 1300. It arrived at a time when English already had its own words for the idea, including "bewray" and "sċyldan" (the ancestor of "shield"-adjacent senses of blame and guilt). Accuse gradually pushed them out, so that by the modern period it is the ordinary word for declaring someone responsible for a wrong.

Synonyms: charge, blame, allege, impute, denounce

Antonyms: defend, absolve, exonerate, pardon, vindicate