Continuously

How to spell continuously

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce continuously

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does continuously mean?

1. adverbIn an unbroken way; without stopping or any interruption over a period of time.

Continuously in a sentence

• The machine ran continuously for three days without overheating.

• Prices have risen continuously since the start of the year.

Where does continuously come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb tenere, meaning 'to hold', which gave rise to continuus, an adjective describing something 'held together' or 'unbroken'. From there Latin formed continuare, 'to join together without a gap', and the related noun and adjective forms passed into Old French and then into English in the late Middle Ages. The adjective 'continuous' was in use by the 1600s, and English then layered on the native adverb ending -ly to produce 'continuously', meaning 'without interruption'. The same tenere root underlies a large family of familiar words such as 'tenant', 'retain', 'contain', and 'tenacious', all of which carry a sense of holding. The spelling trap sits in the middle: the unstressed -u- between the n and the o is easy to drop or muddle, and many writers also pause over whether the ending is -ously or -iously.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• tinu (from tenere: to hold)
• -ous (adjective: full of)
• -ly (adverb)