Approvement

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A legal confession made by an accused accomplice that implicates others in the crime ; an obsolete term for formal approval or endorsement ; the enclosing and improving of common land by a lord of the manor
2. In law, the admission of guilt by a criminal partner who names fellow offenders ; an old-fashioned word for official approval ; the historic practice of fencing in and developing common waste ground for private gain
3. A confession by a co-conspirator who turns against the others to win leniency ; a former word meaning endorsement or sanction ; the enclosure and cultivation of land held in common by a manorial lord

Etymology: "Approvement" is a straightforward English formation: the verb "approve" with the suffix "-ment", which attaches to verbs to name an action or the result of one. The verb itself came into English from Old French "aprover", which descends from Latin "approbare", meaning to test or to confirm as good. The Latin base is "probare", to test or prove, and it is built on "probus", good, so the core idea of the family is that something is shown to be sound. The noun is one of several English nouns made from this verb, and it is the older sense of "approve" that gives it its particular flavour. In medieval legal usage, "approve" could mean to make a profit from land or to turn an accused criminal into an informer, and "approvement" carried a matching legal sense connected with that practice. The everyday sense of giving consent or approval is the more common one now, and the noun has stayed fairly narrow in use.

Synonyms: approval, endorsement, sanction, ratification, acceptance

Antonyms: disapproval, rejection, condemnation