Endure

How to spell endure

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce endure

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does endure mean?

1. verbTo suffer something difficult patiently, or to continue to exist over a long period.

Endure in a sentence

• The workers had to endure freezing conditions on the night shift.

• Their friendship managed to endure decades of distance and change.

Where does endure come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word endure comes from the Latin durare, meaning 'to harden' or 'to last', which was itself built on the adjective durus, meaning 'hard'. Latin durare carried the idea of something becoming tough enough to persist over time. The word passed into Old French as endurer, where the prefix en- added the sense of 'making' something hard or bringing it about, and English adopted it in the 1300s with the meanings 'to last' and 'to bear suffering patiently'. The same durus root sits behind a whole family of familiar words, including durable, duration, during, and even obdurate, all of which share the notion of hardness or lasting. Because the root is dur and the modern verb ends in a silent -e, writers occasionally hesitate over the vowel after the d, but remembering durable keeps the spelling steady.

How the word is built

• en- (to make, cause)
• dur (from Latin durus: hard, lasting)
• -e (silent ending)