Intolerance

How to spell intolerance

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce intolerance

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does intolerance mean?

1. nounAn unwillingness to accept beliefs, behaviours, or people that differ from one's own.
2. nounAn inability of the body to handle a particular food, drug, or substance without an adverse reaction.

Intolerance in a sentence

• The new policy was written to combat racial intolerance in the workplace.

• A blood test confirmed her lactose intolerance after years of discomfort.

• Religious intolerance drove many families to emigrate centuries ago.

• The patient developed an intolerance to the painkiller and switched medication.

Where does intolerance come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin tolerantia, meaning 'the act of bearing or enduring', which was formed from the verb tolerare, 'to bear, to put up with, to endure'. To this the Latin negative prefix in-, meaning 'not', was attached to produce the idea of a refusal or inability to bear something. English took the word in through French in the early 1500s, at first describing a physical inability to endure a hardship and only later settling into its familiar moral sense of refusing to accept other people's beliefs or differences. The same tolerare root still lives openly in 'tolerate', 'tolerant', and 'toleration', which is a helpful memory anchor. The spelling trap is the unstressed ending: writers must remember it is -ance, not -ence, matching its parent 'tolerance'.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• toler (to bear, endure, from Latin tolerare)
• -ance (noun-forming suffix)