judgment

• judgement (British)
• iugement, iudgement, iudgment, iudgemente, iudgmente (obsolete)

From Middle English juggement, borrowed from Old French jugement, from Late Latin iūdicāmentum, from Latin iūdicō. Displaced native English doom.

• enPR: jŭj'mənt, IPA^(key): /ˈdʒʌdʒ.mənt/

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judgment (countable and uncountable, plural judgments)

1. The act of judging.
2. The power or faculty of performing such operations; especially, when unqualified, the faculty of judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely

   a man of judgment

   a politician without judgment

   • Psalms 72:2 (King James Version).

     He shall judge thy people with righteousness and thy poor with judgment.

   • Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, I-i

     Hermia. I would my father look'd but with my eyes. Theseus. Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

3. The conclusion or result of judging; an opinion; a decision.
   • 1589–93 William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, IV:iv

     She in my judgment was as fair as you.

   • 1609, William Shakespeare, Sonnet 14:

     Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;

     And yet methinks I have astronomy ...

4. (law) The act of determining, as in courts of law, what is conformable to law and justice; also, the determination, decision, or sentence of a court, or of a judge.
   • Jeremy Taylor.

     In judgments between rich and poor, consider not what the poor man needs, but what is his own.

   • Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, IV-i

     Most heartily I do beseech the court To give the judgment.

5. (theology) The final award; the last sentence.

See Judgment: Spelling for discussion of spelling usage of judgment versus judgement. Briefly, the form without the -e is preferred in American English, and in law globally, while the form with the -e is preferred in non-legal use in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South African English.

Like abridgment, acknowledgment, and lodgment, judgment is sometimes written with ‘British’ spellings in American English, as judgement (respectively, abridgement, acknowledgement, and lodgement).

The British spelling preserves the rule that G can only be soft while preceding an E, I, or Y.

• judgment in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.