Indulgent

How to spell indulgent

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce indulgent

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does indulgent mean?

1. adjectiveInclined to be generous, lenient, or overly permissive, especially toward oneself or others.

Indulgent in a sentence

• His indulgent grandparents let him stay up far past bedtime.

• A slice of rich chocolate cake felt like an indulgent weekend treat.

Where does indulgent come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb indulgere, which meant 'to be kind or lenient toward someone' and also 'to give oneself over to a pleasure'. The exact parts of that verb are debated by scholars, though the in- element acts as an intensifier rather than a true prefix of motion. From the verb came the present participle indulgentem, meaning 'being lenient or yielding', and English took the adjective in during the early 1500s, partly through French. The closely related noun 'indulgence' carried a strong religious sense in the medieval Church, where an indulgence was a remission of punishment for sin. A useful spelling cue is that the soft -gent ending sounds like 'jent' but is spelled with a plain g, exactly as in 'urgent' and 'agent'.

How the word is built

• in- (intensive prefix)
• dulg- (from Latin indulgere: to be kind to, give in to)
• -ent (adjective suffix)