Last

How to spell last

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce last

What does last mean?

1. adjectiveComing after all others in time or order, or most recent.
2. verbTo continue over a period of time or remain usable.

Last in a sentence

• adjective

  The last chapter of the report summarised every finding.

• verb

  A good pair of boots can last for many years.

• adjective

  She paid the rent on the last day of the month.

• verb

  The meeting should last about an hour.

Where does last come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from Old English, where the form latost served as the superlative of læt, meaning 'late' or 'slow'. The literal idea was 'latest', that is, coming after all the rest, and over time the awkward latost contracted into the smooth single syllable we now write as 'last'. So 'last' and 'late' are really the same family, with 'last' being the worn-down 'most late'. The verb sense, meaning to continue or endure, grew from a separate but related Old English root lǣstan, which originally meant 'to follow' or 'to carry out', and from following along came the sense of going on through time. A quite different noun, the shoemaker's foot-shaped block called a last, descends from Old English lāst meaning 'footprint' or 'track', which is why a cobbler shapes a shoe around it. Because the spelling is short and entirely phonetic, it rarely causes any trouble for adult writers.

How the word is built

• last (from Old English latost, superlative of læt 'late'); the superlative ending has been worn down over centuries into the single syllable