Distant

How to spell distant

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce distant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does distant mean?

1. adjectiveFar away in space or time, or remote in relationship or manner.

Distant in a sentence

• The cabin sat in a distant valley, hours from the nearest town.

• She could still recall that distant summer from her childhood.

Where does distant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb distare, meaning literally 'to stand apart', formed from the prefix dis- 'apart' and stare 'to stand'. The present participle distans, distantem, described something standing away or set at a remove, and it carried both a sense of physical separation in space and an extended sense of separation in time. English took it in during the 1300s by way of Old French distant, applying it first to places far off and later to people who keep an emotional remove. The very same stare 'to stand' lies behind a whole family of English words such as 'stable', 'station', 'constant', and 'instant'. Knowing the root is dis- plus st- helps fix the spelling: one 's' after the 'di', and the ordinary -ant ending rather than -ent.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart)
• st (from stare: to stand)
• -ant (adjective suffix)