View source for Sentence (meanings)

This page is an account of the different meanings, and how they developed, of '''sentence'''. AWE also has articles on 
::the grammatical concept of [[sentence]]; and 
::the [[sentence (spelling)|spelling of sentence]]

*'''Sentence''' began as an [[abstract noun]] (''sententia'', [[plural]] ''sententiae'') formed from the [[Latin]] [[verb]] ''sentire'' 'to feel'. or 'to hold an opinion. So a '''sentence''' was originally an opinion. This meaning became obsolete in the [[Early Modern English]] period.
::A famous quotation from the Roman author [[Terence]] reads "''quot homines tot sententiae''" (''Phormio'', l. 454): 'there are as many opinions as there are people'. The line continues "''suoâ€™ quoique mos'', 'to every one his own way'.
**In the Middle Ages, when [[Roman Catholic]]ism was the only religion in England, 'The Sentences' was Peter Lombard's (c. 1100â€“60) ''Sententiarum libri quatuor'' ('the Four Books of the Sentences'), a collection of the opinions of the [[Fathers of the Church]] on matters of doctrine. Lombard was Bishop of Paris, a\nd known as ''Magister Sentiarum'' ('Master of the Sentences'); his bookj was the fundamental textbook of theology for the thirteenth century.
**From 'opinion' it came to mean 'a judgement', or 'an authoritative opinion' issued by a respected person to decide a matter at issue. 
*Until well into the nineteenth century, a '''sentence''' could be any decision by a court of law. 
**Now, however, the term is only normally used for a decision about the punishment to be imposed on someone found guilty by the verdict. (In a criminal case, a '''verdict''', from Old French ''veir'' 'true' ''dit'' 'said', is the decision, originally by a jury and now often by a judge, with or without a jury, as to the guilt of the person accused of the crime. A '''sentence''' is the appropriate punishment decided by a judge to be inflicted on the guilty person. Don't confuse 'verdict' and 'sentence'.) This meaning gives us the [[verb]] 'to '''sentence'''<nowiki>'</nowiki>, whose only current use in normal English is 'to condem,n to a punishment', 'to announce the court's [i.e. the judge's] decision as to punishment of a convicted person'.
*Also used until the nineteenth century was the meaning "A quoted saying of some eminent person, an apophthegm. Also, a pithy or pointed saying, an aphorism, maxim" (''[[OED]]''), which survives nowadays in the [[adjective]] '''sententious''' which is normally now used [[pejorative]]ly, meaning 'pompous', 'obvious [but given with pretensions of great weight]', 'pretentiously formal'.
*Only in the fifteenth century does '''sentence''' come to have the grammatical meaning that is probably most familiar to most native speakers of English. See further [[sentence (grammar)]].

[[Category:etymology]]
[[Category:clarification of meanings]]
[[Category:Latin words and phrases]]
[[Category:Latin plurals]]
[[Category:Allusions, references and quotations]]