Other forms: petitioned, petitions, petitioning
A petition is a request signed by a lot of people and handed to someone with the power to act on it. The clipboard on the shop counter to save the bus route; the online one with two hundred thousand names asking the government to think again.
It is a verb as well, and you petition someone FOR something, or petition a court. In law the word turns formal and drops the signatures altogether, so a petition for divorce, a bankruptcy petition and a petition to the Supreme Court are all applications made by one person, the petitioner. The everyday verbs around it are start, sign, launch and hand in, and it runs both ways: a petition for a crossing, a petition against the closure. Signing one is not voting. A petition asks, and whoever receives it is free to put it in a drawer.
1nounpetitionA written request signed by many people and sent to someone with the power to act.
“Thousands signed a petition to save the old library from closing.”
2nounlaw(in law) a formal written application made to a court.
“She filed a petition for divorce in the spring.”
3verbbodyTo make a formal request to a person or body in authority.
“Residents petitioned the council for a safe crossing outside the school.”
petition is a formal request.
The Latin is to ask for, the same asking in appetite, which asks for food. A petition is a great many people asking at once.
hooks ontoappetite
It came through Old French peticiun from Latin petitio, a request or solicitation, from peto, to seek, to require, to go forward. Asking, in Latin, was a kind of going towards someone.
Proto-Indo-European
*peth₂-
Old French
peticiun
English, today
petition
Built from
From Middle English -, from Old French peticiun. From Middle English -, borrowed from Old French peticiun, from stem of Latin petitio (“a request, solicitation”), from peto (“to require, seek, go forward”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA