Synonyms

endorse

American

[en-dawrs] / ɛnˈdɔrs /

verb (used with object)

to approve, support, or sustain.

to endorse a political candidate.

Synonyms:

second, back, sustain, uphold, ratify, sanction
to designate oneself as payee of (a check) by signing, usually on the reverse side of the instrument.
to sign one's name on (a commercial document or other instrument).
to make over (a stated amount) to another as payee by one's endorsement.
to write (something) on the back of a document, paper, etc..

to endorse instructions; to endorse one's signature.
to acknowledge (payment) by placing one's signature on a bill, draft, etc.

noun

Heraldry. a narrow pale, about one quarter the usual width and usually repeated several times.

endorse British

/ ɪnˈdɔːs /

verb

to give approval or sanction to
to sign (one's name) on the back of (a cheque, etc) to specify oneself as payee
commerce
1. to sign the back of (a negotiable document) to transfer ownership of the rights to a specified payee
2. to specify (a designated sum) as transferable to another as payee
to write (a qualifying comment, recommendation, etc) on the back of a document
to sign (a document), as when confirming receipt of payment
to record (a conviction) on (a driving licence)

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

Inflected Forms

Participles

Conjugated Forms

Present

Past

Future

Etymology

Origin of endorse

First recorded in 1350–1400; variant (with en- for in- ) of earlier indorse, from Medieval Latin indorsāre “to endorse,” equivalent to Latin in- in- ² + -dorsāre, derivative of dorsum “back”; replacing endoss, Middle English endossen, from Old French endosser, equivalent to en- en- ¹ + -dosser, derivative of dos, from Latin dorsum

Explanation

To endorse is to give support to someone or something. "I endorse this!" means "I think this is a good thing, and so should you." People endorse in many ways. When someone endorses a politician, it means "You should vote for this person, and I'm putting my reputation on the line to say so." When someone endorses a product in a commercial, it means "Go buy this! You'll like it." To endorse is to give support. You can also endorse a check, which means writing your name or someone else's on the back so that you or the other person can cash or deposit it.

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Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

endorse endorses endorsed endorsing

When measles started circulating last year, Kennedy was slow to endorse the MMR shot and hawked ineffective measles treatments.

From Slate ● Jul. 24, 2026

But his decision to endorse a major offshore oil exploration project off the coast of the Amazon has garnered virulent criticism from activists.

From Barron's ● Jul. 21, 2026

For 70 years, it has operated under one rule: It cannot endorse a political candidate.

From Salon ● Jul. 18, 2026

As birthday advice to America, they would no doubt endorse the words of famed American philosopher Clint Eastwood: “Improvise, adapt, and overcome.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026

“Sirs, while I would liefer commend the nobility of restraint, here must I endorse rather the vigor of lively opposition, lest, peradventure, we find that inaction is in itself the occasion of profligacy.”

From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson

As she runs for mayor, the Los Angeles chapter of the DSA hopes to expand its power as it endorses a new slate of 2026 candidates for City Council, city attorney and L.A. school board.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 31, 2026

It is lost on me how he could square those poetic words with the decision he endorses in Callais.

From Slate ● Apr. 30, 2026

He endorses a plan my administration announced in 2020, showing that New York City has a future.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 22, 2026

The EFF instead endorses robust data privacy legislation that better informs users of what information they’re often unintentionally giving away when they agree to Big Tech’s terms and conditions.

From Salon ● Apr. 16, 2026

Even more extreme is the case where a celebrity endorses a diet or medicine or whatever, in which case we have a sample of one, and generally a paid sample at that.

From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos

She endorsed the review as a necessary evolution of “a very important system that we benefit from here in California in a unique way,” while flagging what makes UC an outlier nationally.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026

Momentum investing has paid huge dividends over time, and it is strongly endorsed by academic research, but the returns can be lumpy — you will occasionally get a very nasty spell of underperformance.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 22, 2026

In a livestream of the summit he did not explain what measures he endorsed -- saying there were "two competing views" over the ETFs tied to national flagship tech firms.

From Barron's ● Jul. 21, 2026

Kleban, though, is close to Gov. Janet Mills; he endorsed her after dropping out of the Senate race the first time.

From Slate ● Jul. 16, 2026

So strongly endorsed is this view of Native Americans that checklists exist to judge whether books correctly depict their environmental values.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann

"You can shape a treatment to fit the belief system without explicitly endorsing it," French said, conceding an exorcism might even have a beneficial placebo effect in some cases.

From Barron's ● Jul. 19, 2026

The Fire Brigades Union, Unite and shopworkers' union Usdaw had all previously confirmed they would be endorsing him.

From BBC ● Jul. 15, 2026

“It seems to me that you can read all of these old decisions as endorsing the proposition that the court has decided that this is really not a very strong argument,” Greenberg said.

From Salon ● Jul. 10, 2026

The publication saw an almost 13% jump in paid subscriptions in the month after the Washington Post announced it would stop endorsing presidential candidates right before the election.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 13, 2026

And so his texts played a decisive role in legitimizing the new post-Kuhnian history of science because they were wrongly read as endorsing a thoroughgoing relativism.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023