Depends

How to spell depends

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce depends

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does depends mean?

1. verbIs determined or conditioned by something else, or relies on it.

Depends in a sentence

• The final cost depends on how many guests attend.

• Whether the flight leaves on time depends on the weather.

Where does depends come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb dependere, which literally meant 'to hang down' or 'to hang from', formed from de- meaning 'down' or 'from' and pendere meaning 'to hang'. Over time the physical image of one thing hanging from another shifted into the figurative idea of one thing being contingent on or supported by another, so 'to depend on' came to mean 'to rely on' or 'to be determined by'. English took the word in through Old French dependre during the late Middle Ages, and by the 1400s it carried both the literal 'hang' sense and the modern sense of relying on something. The same pendere root hangs quietly inside many relatives, such as 'pendant' (something that hangs), 'pending' (still hanging, unresolved), and 'suspend' (to hang up). Remembering that buried 'pend', the part that means 'hang', helps fix the spelling, since the trap is hearing the unstressed first syllable as 'di' rather than seeing the 'de' prefix.

How the word is built

• de- (down, from)
• pend (to hang)
• -s (third-person singular ending)