Legendary
adjectiveExtremely famous, celebrated, or remarkable, often through long-told stories.
How to spell legendary
9 letters · 4 syllables
How to pronounce legendary
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does legendary mean?
- adjectiveExtremely famous, celebrated, or remarkable, often through long-told stories.
Legendary in a sentence
-
The chef earned a legendary reputation for her slow-cooked stews.
-
His legendary patience made him the calmest negotiator in the firm.
Where does legendary come from?
Language of origin: Latin
The word traces back to the Latin verb legere, which meant 'to read' or 'to gather', and its gerund form legenda, literally 'things to be read'. In the medieval church a legenda was a collection of saints' lives read aloud on their feast days, so the noun 'legend' first meant such an edifying story. From the same root English gained 'legend' through Old French in the 1300s, and the adjective 'legendary' followed, formed by adding the Latin-derived suffix -ary, meaning 'relating to'. Over time the sense drifted from religious readings toward famous traditional tales and then to anything celebrated or remarkable. The spelling trap lies in that unstressed ending, since writers often pause over whether it is -ary or -ery; remembering the Latin -arius behind -ary helps fix it.
How the word is built
- legend (from Latin legenda: things to be read)
- -ary (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to')
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.