Endless

How to spell endless

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce endless

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does endless mean?

1. adjectiveHaving or seeming to have no limit, boundary, or finishing point.

Endless in a sentence

• The new manager held an endless series of meetings that achieved very little.

• From the cliff path they looked out over an endless stretch of grey sea.

Where does endless come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, assembled from two Old English parts that adults still use every day. The first is 'ende', the Old English noun meaning the boundary, limit, or finishing point of something, which has barely changed its spelling in a thousand years. The second is the suffix '-leas', the ancestor of modern '-less', which originally meant 'free from' or 'without', and which is itself related to the old word 'loose'. Joined together, 'endeleas' literally meant 'without an end', and that sense has stayed remarkably stable from the earliest recorded English right through to the present. Because both pieces are plain Germanic stock, the spelling holds no foreign surprises; the only thing to watch is keeping the single 'd' and the doubled-looking '-less' ending straight.

How the word is built

• end (the limit or finish)
• -less (suffix meaning 'without')