Caveat Meaning and Pronunciation

A caveat is a condition, limitation, stipulation, or warning added to a general statement, recommendation, or agreement. When someone ’adds a caveat’ they are saying that you must consider this additional information before weighting the value of the statement, acting on the information, or entering into the agreement. It is a caution, or admonition for your consideration. Here are some examples of how to use caveat in a sentence: “The author agreed to license the movie rights to his book, with the caveat that he himself write the screenplay.“ “The vaccine is getting into more arms, but you must consider this one caveat: We are wasting thousands of doses which could be put to good use.“ “The legislature has stripped the governor of the extraordinary emergency powers he was given during the emergency, with one caveat: He still has the power to extend orders he has already issued.“ Sometimes, a caveat is a qualification. A qualification is a statement or assertion that makes another statement less absolute or valuable. “I am going to also explain the legal definition of caveat, with one caveat: I’m not an expert on legal terms and do less research on them than on general English terms.“ In legal terms, a caveat is a formal notice given to a judicial officer, such as a judge or other public official, to notify him or her that they should suspend a certain proceeding or action until the opposing party has been given an opportunity to be heard. Most typically, these caveats are filed in probate hearings when someone wants to challenge the validity of a will. They want to stop the court from administering the estate until this opposing party is notified. A caveat can also be a warning or admonition. In this way, it is most famously used in the Latin phrase caveat emptor, which means “let the buyer beware.“ This means that the person who buys something must take responsibility for the quality of goods that he or she is buying instead of the seller and it’s usually used to warn people against doing business with a certain party with a reputation for dishonesty; someone who doesn’t stand behind his or her goods or services and is in idiomatic terms ’fly by night.’ However, it may also apply to a situation where used goods are sold very cheaply, such as a flea market.