Endanger

How to spell endanger

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce endanger

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does endanger mean?

1. verbTo put someone or something at risk of harm, loss, or extinction.

Endanger in a sentence

• Reckless driving can endanger everyone on the road.

• Pollution continues to endanger rare species in the river.

Where does endanger come from?

Language of origin: French

This verb is built from the prefix en-, meaning 'to put into' or 'to cause to be', attached to the noun danger. The prefix en- came into English from Old French and ultimately from the Latin in-, meaning 'in' or 'into'. The noun danger has a surprising backstory: it derives from the Old French dangier, an alteration of an earlier word meaning 'the power of a lord to harm', which traces back to the Latin dominium, meaning 'lordship' or 'dominion', and beyond that to dominus, meaning 'master' or 'lord'. So the original idea was being within someone's power to do you harm, and only later did danger come to mean peril in general. English combined the prefix and the noun in the late 1400s to form endanger, meaning 'to put into peril'. The spelling is reassuringly regular, since it is simply en plus the familiar word danger, which makes the silent trap of guessing a double letter unnecessary.

How the word is built

• en- (to put into, cause to be)
• danger (risk, peril)