Indefinitely

How to spell indefinitely

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce indefinitely

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does indefinitely mean?

1. adverbFor a period of time with no fixed or known end.

Indefinitely in a sentence

• The project has been postponed indefinitely while funding is reviewed.

• The museum will store the artefacts indefinitely in a climate-controlled vault.

Where does indefinitely come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin finis, which literally meant 'an end', 'a boundary', or 'a limit', the same root that gives us 'finish', 'final', and 'finite'. From finis the Latins built definire, 'to set a boundary to' or 'to determine precisely', which produced definitus, 'bounded' or 'settled'. Adding the negative prefix in-, meaning 'not', yielded the idea of something without fixed limits, and English assembled 'indefinite' in the early 1600s from these Latin parts. The adverb 'indefinitely' simply adds the ordinary -ly ending to mean 'for an unlimited period' or 'without a set boundary'. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the second syllable of 'definite' is an unstressed schwa, so writers reach for 'definately', but the fin root and the -ite ending keep the correct 'definite' visible inside the longer word.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• de- (from)
• fin (end, limit, from Latin finis)
• -ite (adjective)
• -ly (adverb)