judgment

Judgment came in from Old French jugement in the mid-1200s, and it carries the French suffix -ment, which English took in on so many borrowings that it eventually became a free-floating English ending, attachable to native roots as in fulfilment. The spelling of this particular word has never settled: judgment without the e is standard in American English and in British legal usage, judgement with it in general British usage, and both have been in print for centuries.

The senses arrived in a sequence that tracks the institution. First the action of trying at law, in the mid-1200s; then the penalty a court imposes, in the late 1200s; then any authoritative decision or verdict, in the early 1300s; then the Last Judgment in the late 1300s. The everyday sense of discernment — good judgment — is comparatively recent, only the 1530s.

judgment
(n.)
mid-13c.,
jugement
, "action of trying at law, trial," also "capacity for making decisions," from Old French
jugement
"legal judgment; diagnosis; the Last Judgment" (11c.), from
jugier
"to judge" (see
judge
(v.)).
From late 13c. as "penalty imposed by a court;" early 14c. as "any authoritative decision, verdict in a court case." From late 14c. in reference to the final trial of the human race in a future state (
Judgment Day
attested from late 14c.). Also from c. 1300 as "opinion." Sense of "discernment" is first recorded 1530s. By 1610s as "a divine allotment, event regarded as an expression of divine displeasure."
also from mid-13c.

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