Longtime
adjectiveHaving existed or continued for a long period; of long standing.
How to spell longtime
8 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce longtime
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does longtime mean?
- adjectiveHaving existed or continued for a long period; of long standing.
Longtime in a sentence
-
Her longtime business partner finally agreed to retire.
-
The company rewarded its longtime employees with extra leave.
Where does longtime come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is a transparent modern compound built from two of the oldest words in English. 'Long' descends from Old English 'lang' or 'long', meaning extended in space or duration, while 'time' comes from Old English 'tima', meaning a period or season. Both elements are native Germanic words with deep Anglo-Saxon roots, so the compound carries no foreign borrowing at all. The fused single-word adjective 'longtime', meaning of long standing or long continued, took hold mainly in American usage during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where it sits before a noun, as in 'longtime friend'. The spelling trap is purely the joining: it is written solid as one word in its adjectival sense, even though the phrase 'a long time' is two separate words.
How the word is built
- long (extended in duration)
- time (period, span)
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.