agreement

noun

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd Proto-Italic *ad Proto-Italic *ad- Latin ad- Old French a- Proto-Indo-European *gʷerH- Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Indo-European *gʷr̥Htós Proto-Italic *gʷrātos Latin grātus Latin grātumder. Old French gré Old French agreer Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥ Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥tom Proto-Italic *-mentom Latin -mentum Old French -ment Old French agrementbor. Middle English agrement English agreement From Middle English agrement, agreement, from Old French agrement, agreement. Doublet of agrément. Morphologically agree + -ment.

1. An understanding between entities to follow a specific course of conduct.

   “to enter an agreement”

   “The UK and US negotiators were nearing agreement.”

2. A state whereby several parties share a view or opinion; the state of not contradicting one another.

   “The results of my experiment are in agreement with those of Michelson and with the law of General Relativity.”

3. A legally binding contract enforceable in a court of law.
4. Rules that exist in many languages that force some parts of a sentence to be used or inflected differently depending on certain attributes of other parts.

   “Having clarified what we mean by ‘Personʼ and ‘Numberʼ, we can now return to our earlier observation that a finite I is inflected not only for Tense, but also for Agreement. More particularly, I inflects for Person and Number, and must ‘agreeʼ with its Subject, in the sense that the Person/Number features of I must match those of the Subject.”

5. An agreeable quality.

   “Her nymph-like features such agreements have / That I could venture with her to the grave [...].”