Attendance

How to spell attendance

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce attendance

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does attendance mean?

1. nounThe act of being present at a place or event, or the number of people present.

Attendance in a sentence

• The manager keeps a record of staff attendance each morning.

• Poor attendance at the lectures worried the department.

Where does attendance come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb attendere, which combined the prefix ad-, meaning 'to' or 'toward', with the verb tendere, meaning 'to stretch'. The literal image was of stretching one's mind toward something, in other words paying close heed to it. English took the verb 'attend' from Old French atendre during the 1300s, and the noun 'attendance' followed soon after, originally meaning the act of waiting on or serving someone, as in attendance at a royal court. Over time the noun settled into its modern senses of being present at an event and the number of people present. The same tendere root that gives us this word also underlies 'tension', 'tendency', and 'intend', a family that helps explain the otherwise easily forgotten 'tend' buried in the middle of the spelling.

How the word is built

• at- (from ad-: to, toward)
• tend (from Latin tendere: to stretch)
• -ance (noun suffix)