Frontline

How to spell frontline

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce frontline

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does frontline mean?

1. adjectiveDirectly involved in the most active or demanding part of a job or situation, especially where the first contact with people or danger occurs.
2. nounThe foremost position where opposing forces are in direct contact during a conflict.

Frontline in a sentence

• adjective

  The hospital thanked its frontline nurses for their tireless work.

• noun

  Fresh troops were marched up to the frontline at dawn.

• adjective

  Frontline retail workers dealt with frustrated customers all day.

• noun

  The journalist reported from the frontline for several weeks.

Where does frontline come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a transparent English compound, joining 'front' and 'line', both of which arrived in English from Latin by way of French. 'Front' descends from the Latin frons, meaning the forehead or the foremost part of something, while 'line' goes back to the Latin linea, a string or thread made of linen (linum), which came to mean any straight mark or row. The two words were used side by side as 'front line' from the 1600s to describe the foremost rank of troops facing the enemy, and the phrase became grimly familiar during the trench warfare of the First World War. Over the twentieth century the closed-up form 'frontline' settled in as an adjective for anything positioned at the point of first contact, whether in combat, healthcare, or customer service. The spelling trap is simply remembering that it is one fused word here, with no space and no hyphen.

How the word is built

• front (foremost part)
• line (row, boundary)