Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Charter
/ˈtʃɑːrtər/noun
A formal document granting rights, or a contract hiring a whole ship or aircraft.
The Greek roots
χάρτης
khártēs
sheet of papyrus
Literally: “little papyrus sheet”
Follow a root:χάρτης7 words
The story of the word
Χάρτης is the papyrus sheet itself, the surface rather than the text. Latin took it as charta, made the diminutive cartula, and Old French chartre delivered it to English by 1200. The document then outgrew the paper, so a charter now means the rights it records rather than the thing they are written on; the same word gives card, chart, cartography and cartoon, which was originally a full-size drawing on stiff paper.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- c. 1200
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cardchartcartographycartoon
In a sentence
The town has held a royal charter since 1256.
They chartered a boat for the weekend.