Forever

How to spell forever

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce forever

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does forever mean?

1. adverbFor all future time; without ever coming to an end.
2. adverbFor an unreasonably or tediously long time.

Forever in a sentence

• She promised to love him forever.

• The queue at the post office took forever to clear.

• The diamond ring was meant to last forever.

• Downloading the update seemed to take forever.

Where does forever come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a compound of the ordinary English preposition 'for' and the adverb 'ever', which descends from the Old English 'aefre', meaning 'always' or 'at any time'. For centuries the two words were written separately as 'for ever', and that two-word spelling remained common in British writing well into the modern era. The single-word form 'forever' gained ground first in American usage during the nineteenth century before becoming the dominant spelling almost everywhere. The 'ever' element is the same one buried inside 'every' and 'never', the latter literally being 'not ever'. The spelling trap is simply remembering it is now one solid word rather than the older 'for ever'.

How the word is built

• for (intensifying prefix from Old English)
• ever (always, at all times)