Sacramentum

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A ritual acknowledged within a faith community as a means of receiving divine grace A formal event that symbolizes a covenant between the believer and the divine An essential spiritual practice representing a commitment to one's beliefs and the sacred
2. A sacred ceremony recognized by a religious group for receiving blessing ; a solemn promise or pledge made in ancient Roman legal and military contexts
3. A ritual act considered a visible sign of spiritual grace by a faith community ; an official oath sworn by soldiers or citizens in Roman times

Etymology: Latin "sacrāmentum" was a legal and military term before it was ever a religious one. A Roman who swore the military oath, the sacramentum, bound himself by a solemn pledge, and the same word was used for the sum of money a litigant deposited with the temple treasury when a lawsuit began, forfeited by the loser. The core idea was a binding oath made sacred, which is why the word was later taken up for religious vows. The word is built from "sacrāre," to consecrate or make holy, itself from "sacer," sacred, plus the suffix "-mentum," which forms nouns denoting a means or result, so the sense is literally something that makes sacred. Christian Latin writers then applied it to rites and mysteries, and "sacrament" passed into Old English and Middle English through the church's vocabulary. In English, "sacrament" is a borrowing from Latin, and it became the standard term for the rites that Christian churches regard as channels of divine grace. The Latin legal sense of a binding pledge survives in the idea of a solemn commitment that the broader English meaning still carries.