Eventual

How to spell eventual

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce eventual

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does eventual mean?

1. adjectiveHappening or arriving at the end of a process or period of time, after a series of stages.

Eventual in a sentence

• The eventual sale of the house took almost a year to complete.

• Investors were patient because they trusted the eventual return on their money.

Where does eventual come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb evenire, meaning 'to come out' or 'to result', formed from e- 'out' and venire 'to come'. The same verb produced the noun eventus, an outcome or result, which is the direct ancestor of the English word 'event'. In the late 1500s English fashioned the adjective 'eventual' to describe something connected with an event or outcome, and over time the sense narrowed to mean the result that finally arrives at the end of a chain of happenings. The shared root venire 'to come' also sits inside everyday relatives such as 'invent', 'prevent', and 'venue', all of which involve something coming about. The spelling trap is the quiet -ual ending, where the unstressed vowels blur in speech and writers can be tempted to drop the second u or swap the sequence.

How the word is built

• event- (from Latin eventus: an outcome, result)
• -ual (adjective suffix: relating to)