Long

How to spell long

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce long

What does long mean?

1. adjectiveHaving great length in space or time; extending far from one end to the other.
2. verbTo feel a strong, often wistful desire for something.

Long in a sentence

• adjective

  The commute felt especially long after the trains were delayed.

• verb

  After months abroad, they began to long for home cooking.

• adjective

  She tied back her long hair before starting work.

• verb

  During the cold winter she would long for the warmth of summer.

Where does long come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descending from the Old English 'lang' or 'long', which meant having great extent from end to end or lasting a great while. It belongs squarely to the Germanic family, with close cousins such as German 'lang', Dutch 'lang', and Old Norse 'langr', all tracing back to a shared prehistoric Germanic form. Scholars also link it to the Latin 'longus', the source of words like 'longitude' and 'elongate', though English inherited 'long' directly rather than borrowing it. The verb sense, meaning to yearn for something, grew out of the same root by the Middle English period; the idea was of a desire stretching out toward what is far off, so distance of feeling echoes distance of space. Because the word is so old and so short, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable, and the silent-sounding 'ng' ending is simply how Old English wrote that nasal sound.

How the word is built

• long (a single Old English root meaning extended in space or time); no prefix or suffix