# accord

Pronunciation: US say "uh-KORD" /əˈkɔɹd/; UK/AUS say "uh-KAWD" /əˈkɔːd/

## Noun

1. A formal agreement reached between nations or governments.
   - Simple: A formal agreement made between countries.
   - _The two governments finalized a climate accord after months of negotiation._
   - _The accord committed both parties to gradual disarmament._
3. A voluntary or spontaneous impulse to act on one's own initiative.
   - Simple: A choice to do something yourself, without being told or forced.
   - _He apologized of his own accord, without any prompting._
   - _The volunteers stayed late of their own accord to finish the job._
4. Agreement or harmony, whether in people's opinions or actions or between things.
   - Simple: A state in which people agree, or in which things fit well together.
   - _For once, the two parties were in complete accord about how to spend the budget._
   - _Their views slowly came into accord after the long debate._
7. A harmony in sound, pitch, and tone; a pleasing musical concord.
   - Simple: A pleasing match of sounds that go well together.
   - _The strings and woodwinds settled into a rich accord._
   - _Their two voices rose in close accord through the final verse._
8. A distinctive blend of fragrances, or the smell it produces.
   - Simple: A blend of scents that work together to make one smell.
   - _The fragrance is built around a warm amber accord._
   - _Perfumers combine several accords to create a finished scent._

## Verb

2. To grant or award something as suitable or proper; to concede.
   - Simple: To give someone something they should have, like rights or respect.
   - _Courts must accord every defendant a fair trial._
   - _The treaty accords foreign investors the same status as locals._
5. To agree or correspond; to be in harmony with something else, including in sound.
   - Simple: To agree with or match something else.
   - _The witness's account does not accord with the physical evidence._
   - _These results accord well with findings from earlier studies._

## Verb

6. To bring people or things into agreement; to reconcile, settle, or adjust them. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: To make people or things agree or fit together.
9. To arrive at an agreement; to come to terms with another party. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: To reach an agreement with someone.
10. To give one's consent; to assent to something proposed. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To say yes to something or agree to it.

## Other meanings

- (noun) A settlement between disputing parties in which agreed compensation for an injury is stipulated, preventing a lawsuit once carried out.

## Origin

**Meanings 1, 3–4, 7–8** — Old French acort, which comes from the verb acorder (see the verb sense), passed into Middle English as accord.
**Meanings 2, 5–6, 9–10** — Latin concordāre, with its prefix swapped for Latin ad-, gave Vulgar Latin *accordāre and then Old French acorder (compare modern French accord and accorder), which Middle English borrowed as accorden or acorden. Its deepest root is Proto-Indo-European *ḱḗr ~ *ḱr̥d-, so it is a distant relative of English 'heart' through Proto-Germanic *hertô.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/accord (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).