Fend
verbTo ward off an attack or difficulty, or to manage and provide for oneself without help.
How to spell fend
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce fend
What does fend mean?
- verbTo ward off an attack or difficulty, or to manage and provide for oneself without help.
Fend in a sentence
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She raised an arm to fend off the falling boxes.
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After the layoffs he had to fend for himself financially.
Where does fend come from?
Language of origin: Latin
Fend is a shortened form of the older verb 'defend', which English took from the Old French defendre in the 1200s. The ultimate source is the Latin defendere, built from the prefix de- ('away') and the verb fendere ('to strike' or 'to push'), so the literal sense was to strike or push something away from oneself. By the 1300s English speakers had clipped off the opening syllable to make 'fend', a process called aphesis that also gave us 'cute' from 'acute' and 'spite' from 'despite'. The trimmed word kept the core idea of pushing danger aside, which survives in the common phrase 'fend off', and it later widened to 'fend for', meaning to look after oneself. The same fendere root quietly powers 'offend' and 'fender', the part of a car that pushes obstacles away.
How the word is built
- fend (aphetic shortening of 'defend', from Latin defendere: to ward off)
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