Infinity

How to spell infinity

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce infinity

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does infinity mean?

1. nounA limitless quantity, extent, or space with no end or boundary.

Infinity in a sentence

• The night sky gave her a sense of infinity stretching overhead.

• In mathematics, the sequence approaches infinity as the numbers keep growing.

Where does infinity come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin infinitas, meaning 'boundlessness' or 'endlessness', which was formed from the negative prefix in- ('not') joined to finis, meaning 'end' or 'boundary'. The literal sense was therefore 'the state of having no end', and that same finis root underlies a whole family of everyday words such as 'finish', 'final', and 'define', all of which involve setting a limit or boundary. English took the word in through Old French infinite during the 1300s, and the noun infinity settled in not long after. Mathematicians later gave it a precise technical life, and the sideways figure-eight symbol for it was introduced by John Wallis in the seventeenth century. For spelling, it helps to remember the buried finis: the double f belongs to the prefix in- meeting that root, while the ending is the simple -ity that closes off so many abstract nouns.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• finit (from finis: end, boundary)
• -y (noun suffix denoting a state)