During

How to spell during

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce during

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does during mean?

1. prepositionThroughout the course or duration of a particular period or event.

During in a sentence

• The office stays quiet during the summer holidays.

• Please keep your phone on silent during the meeting.

Where does during come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word began life as the present participle of the now-obsolete English verb 'dure', meaning 'to last' or 'to endure', which itself came from the Latin durare, 'to harden, hold out, or last'. That Latin verb was built on durus, meaning 'hard', the same root that gives us 'durable', 'endure', and 'duration'. In Middle English a phrase such as 'during the night' originally meant something closer to 'the night lasting', a participle hanging off an implied subject, but speakers gradually reanalysed 'during' as a fixed preposition meaning 'throughout the course of'. By the late 1300s it had settled into its modern grammatical role, while the parent verb 'dure' faded from everyday use. Knowing that the buried sense is 'lasting' helps explain the single r and the -ing ending that some writers second-guess.

How the word is built

• dur- (from durare: to last, endure)
• -ing (forming a preposition from the old present participle)