Entrance

How to spell entrance

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce entrance

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does entrance mean?

1. nounA door, gate, or opening through which one enters a place, or the act of entering.
2. verbTo fill someone with wonder and delight, holding their attention as if by a spell.

Entrance in a sentence

• noun

  The main entrance to the museum is on the north side.

• verb

  The singer can entrance an entire concert hall within minutes.

• noun

  Guests should use the side entrance during the renovation.

• verb

  Such vivid colours will entrance any visitor to the gallery.

Where does entrance come from?

Language of origin: French

This single spelling actually covers two words with separate stories. The noun arrived from French in the 1500s, built on the French verb entrer 'to go in', which itself descends from the Latin intrare 'to enter', formed from intra meaning 'within'; the noun-forming ending -ance was tacked on to mean 'the act or place of entering'. The verb is a different creature: it was put together in English around the same period from the prefix en-, meaning 'to put into', and the noun trance, a dazed or rapt state that English had earlier borrowed through French from the Latin transire 'to pass over or across'. So while the doorway sense leads you inside a building, the spellbound sense traces back to the idea of the mind passing across into another state. The two meanings are unrelated in origin but collapsed onto the same letters, which is why the stress shifts depending on which one you mean. The shared trap for writers is the quiet -ance ending, since the schwa gives no clue whether to write -ance or -ence.

How the word is built

• For the noun: entr- (from French entrer 'to enter')
• -ance (noun-forming suffix). For the verb: en- (to put into)
• trance (a dazed, spellbound state).