Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed that the word “caveat” is being used with increasing frequency, and it seems that almost everyone is using it incorrectly.
The word used to be obscure, with almost no one using it. My introduction to it came in school when we studied the Roman Empire and we were introduced to the phrases “Caveat Vendor” and “Caveat Emptor”. I thought it was interesting and remembered the meaning as taught: “Beware”. But hardly anyone ever used it. And that was that.
Now, I hear someone using it almost every day and they seem to use it to mean “an exception” or “an additional condition”, which seems wrong to me.
Has anyone else noticed this, and is the word being used incorrectly?
You might have a point if we were ancient Romans speaking Latin, but we’re modern anglos speaking English.
Yes, “caveat” in Latin meant “beware” or “caution”. However, as land registries developed, there developed a need to be able to register competing claims or interests to parcels of land, claims that might be in litigation but had not been settled. Those types of claims could weaken the market value of the land, because the registered owner’s title might turn out to be flawed in some way.
So what’s a nice pithy word to warn that there might be a defect in the title? Caveat! Beware! Caution! So “caveat” began to be entered on land registries to indicate that there might be a qualification or condition on the title to the piece of land.
And as time went on, “caveat” began to acquire a new meaning, by extension from its use as a warning about a possible defect or qualification: “caveat” now has the additional meaning in English of a condition or qualification.
The word in this sense probably originally was used by lawyers and conveyancers, but gradually escaped into the wild and now is used more generally. Blame General Haig for that, if you will. (And for verbing it, to boot.)
Would an ancient Roman understand it to have that meaning? Dunno - I’m not a Latin scholar. But it has acquired that meaning in English. Pointing to the original Latin meaning of a word doesn’t go very far in saying that an English meaning of that word is “incorrect”. English usage establishes that “caution” or “condition” is a perfectly cromulent meaning of “caveat.”
Yep, words often take on additional meanings, sometimes replacing the original sense, sometimes living in harmony with it.
In patent law for instance a caveat means “A description of some invention, designed to be patented, lodged in the office before the patent right is taken out, operating as a bar to applications respecting the same invention, from any other quarter.”
Caveats started off in the ecclesiastical courts; a caveat was a notice given to the court to prevent a matter being disposed of until some interested party had an opportunity to be heard. From there it spread into the courts generally, and from there to places like land registries, patent registries, etc. It’s basically a notice that “I’ve got a legitimate interest in such and such a case/property/patent idea, and you shouldn’t deal with/dispose of it without me having an opportunity to assert my interest”.
Strictly speaking it’s a notice addressed to the court registrar/land registrar/patent registrar that operates to prevent him from taking any conclusive action/making any final determination until the person lodging the notice has had an opportunity to be heard. But of course it also acts as a flag to anyone else who may be interests in the case/land/whatever that there could be a problem here, and from there it’s an easy step to a generalised meaning of exception/condition/reservation of right/caution. And in fact all these senses have been current since the sixteenth century.
It was common in my youth (80s South Africa), in the phrase “…with the caveat that…” meaning “…with the proviso that…” - it was always used in the sense of “Pay attention, this is something to be aware of”, and is an established meaning of the term , not some new usage.
Caveats started off in the ecclesiastical courts; a caveat was a notice given to the court to prevent a matter being disposed of until some interested party had an opportunity to be heard. From there it spread into the courts generally, and from there to places like land registries, patent registries, etc. It’s basically a notice that “I’ve got a legitimate interest in such and such a case/property/patent idea, and you shouldn’t deal with/dispose of it without me having an opportunity to assert my interest”.
Strictly speaking it’s a notice addressed to the court registrar/land registrar/patent registrar that operates to prevent him from taking any conclusive action/making any final determination until the person lodging the notice has had an opportunity to be heard. But of course it also acts as a flag to anyone else who may be interests in the case/land/whatever that there could be a problem here, and from there it’s an easy step to a generalised meaning of exception/condition/reservation of right/caution. And in fact all these senses have been current since the sixteenth century.
I was born in 1975, and “caveat” has always meant something like “cautionary detail” to me. It’s not a new usage at all, if my memory is to be believed.
I’m not seeing it used incorrectly, and that is surprising now that I think of it. “Exceptions” and “additional conditions” are things you should be aware of. Sounds like the word is being used exactly as it was in the original Latin.
Like “a warranty will cover any mechanical problems that arise during the first three years you own the car, but the caveat is that you’ll be paying an extra $75 a month for at least two more years after the warranty expires”. So, warranties might be a good idea, but beware this important fact about warranties.
In the original Latin, it’s an verb - specifically, the imperative form - not a noun (at least in the usages we are familiar with such as caveat emptor). But your point doesn’t really make sense in any case. A fire is also a thing you should be aware of, but that doesn’t mean using ignis to refer to exceptions or conditions would be harmonious with the Latin. The best you could say is that it’s not a conflicting usage. And in actual fact, the original meaning of caveat emptor was an instruction to sellers to allow buyers to inspect goods before purchasing.
Assuming that a word must have the same meaning that it did historically is called the Etymological Fallacy. My 1933 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary lists five definitions for caveat. Definitions 1 and 5 are legal terms; these are the others:
Interestingly, definitions 3 and 4 are marked as obsolete, although I’m not sure that they would seem particularly strange in current usage.
I’m not sure what doesn’t make sense to you. Ignis means fire. Caveat means “beware”. If I were selling you a house that was on fire, a caveat would be that it was on fire. “Here’s a cheap house, caveat being that it is currently on fire”.
Point taken in regards to noun vs verb usage, but that doesn’t seem like a big deal to me. We noun verbs and verb nouns all the time in English. Changing a Latin word from meaning “beware” to “a thing you should beware of” isn’t changing the meaning much, in my opinion. Is that what the OP is calling incorrect usage? I thought they were referring to a significant difference in meaning, not the subtle difference between using it as a verb versus a noun.
My point is that there are lots of things you should be aware of, not just exceptions. So it’s no more consistent with the Latin to use it in that sense than it is to use the word for other things you should be aware of, like fires or bears or hyperinflation or an impending tsunami.
That is not to say that I think there is anything wrong with the modern usage. It just shouldn’t be defended on the grounds that we haven’t changed the meaning of the word.
Off topic, but I’ve always found it interesting that “beware” in English has no past tense. There’s no way to say something like “You should have *bewared of that fire.”
“Be aware” and “beware” have quite dissimilar meanings.
You can be aware of something that is quite harmless or even beneficial.
Going in the opposite direction, sometimes with Latin words the original meaning is lost on people due to a newer usage. E.g., “quantum”. It refers to an unspecified amount. Not necessarily a very tiny fixed amount.
According to Etymology Online, “beware” is indeed a contraction, but it’s a contraction of “be ware”, not “be aware”. “Ware” is obsolete in modern English, so it’s no longer possible to separate the words and inflect them separately. The proper past tense after uncontraction (?) would presumably be “You should have been ware of the fire”, but that doesn’t work since “ware” is no longer used.
