Eternity

How to spell eternity

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce eternity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does eternity mean?

1. nounInfinite or unending time, often considered as existing beyond death or outside the normal flow of time.
2. nounA period that feels extremely or tediously long, used as an exaggeration in everyday speech.

Eternity in a sentence

• Many religions promise believers a life that continues for all eternity.

• The queue at passport control took what felt like an eternity.

• The poem describes the stars as fixed points of light shining through eternity.

• Waiting for the test results seemed to last an eternity.

Where does eternity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin aeternitas, meaning 'endlessness' or 'everlasting duration', which was built on the adjective aeternus, 'eternal' or 'lasting forever'. That adjective in turn grew from aevum, a noun meaning 'an age', 'a lifetime', or 'a span of time', the same root that gives us 'age' and even 'longevity'. English took the word in during the 1300s through Old French eternite, where the long Latin diphthong 'ae' had already been simplified to a plain 'e'. The original idea was strictly religious and philosophical, describing a state outside of time altogether rather than merely a very long stretch of it. The single 't' followed by '-ity' is the spelling trap here, since the schwa sound in the middle ('e-TER-ni-ty') gives no clue that the vowel is an 'i'.

How the word is built

• etern- (from Latin aeternus: everlasting)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix denoting a state or quality)