What is the definition of 'bonafied'?

Answer 1

This is an interesting word because it shows how complete ignorance can result in language change.

The Latin phrase "bona fide" means "good faith", from the words "bona" meaning "good" and "fide" meaning "faith" as in the word fidelity. The phrase is pronounced "bona fee-day". It is used by lawyers, particularly in the concept of a bona fide purchaser for value. In this case the idea is that the purchaser is a genuine purchaser and not someone who has bought something as a legal fiction.

This word slipped from the legal vocabulary into business use to describe genuine non-fraudulent customers. And this is where the ignorant guys step in. At some point someone read the word who had never heard it pronounced and assumed that the word "fide" must rhyme with "hide". As people walked around pronouncing it this way, some equally ignorant person who had never heard it spelled assumed that it must be the past tense of a verb used as an adjective, which is common enough, and assumed that it must be spelled "bonafied". From this the further ignorant assumption was made that there must be a verb "bonafy" for which this was the past.

When I first heard this word used, it was used to mean "to verify as genuine". I must confess that I laughed out loud when I realized what the etymology of the word was.