verdict [ME] After the Norman Conquest, French became the language of the law in England and many French legal terms made their way into English. Verdict came immediately from French, but goes back to Latin verus ‘true’, source also of verify [ME], veritable [LME], and very [ME], and dicere ‘to say’, from which addict [M16th] originally ‘assigned by decree’ and so bound to something and only early 20th century in the modern sense; condition [ME] speaking with, agreement; contradiction [LME] ‘speaking against’; dictate [L16th]; predict [L16th] ‘speaking in advance’; and numerous other words derive.