Skip to main content
PlainSpell

emendation

/ˌiːmɛnˈdeɪʃən/noun

emendation is a noun meaning “The act of altering for the better, or correcting what is erroneous or faulty; correction; improvement” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled E-M-E-N-D-A-T-I-O-N, and it appears about once in every 28 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of emendation is emendations.

What does emendation mean?

noun

  1. 1

    The act of altering for the better, or correcting what is erroneous or faulty; correction; improvement.

  2. 2

    Alteration by editorial criticism, as of a text so as to give a better reading; removal of errors or corruptions from a document.

    The book might be improved by judicious emendations.

  3. 3

    An intentional change in the spelling of a scientific name, which is usually not allowed.

    The genus name Uramyia is an unjustified emendation of Uramya even though it uses a better transliteration of the Greek word μυῖα.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce emendation?

  • /ˌiːmɛnˈdeɪʃən/
  • /ˌɛmənˈdeɪʃən/
  • /ɪˌmɛnˈdeɪʃən/

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-emendation.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of emendation

  • emendations plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is emendation?

Emendation appears about once in every 28 million words in written English, the 159,707th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Emendation in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense the act of altering; alteration:

LanguageWords
Spanishemendación, enmendación, enmendamiento, enmendadura, enmienda, emienda

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does emendation come from?

From Middle English emendatioun, from Latin ēmendātiō; equivalent to emend + -ation. Piecewise doublet of amendation.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).