Momentous

How to spell momentous

9 letters · 3 syllables

The most common mistake is momentus. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

momentus momentous

What people typed instead

• momentus3 people

How to pronounce momentous

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does momentous mean?

1. adjectiveOf great importance or significance, especially because of consequences that will follow.

Momentous in a sentence

• The merger was a momentous event for everyone working at the company.

• Choosing to emigrate was the most momentous decision of her life.

Where does momentous come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Momentous reaches back to the Latin noun momentum, which originally meant a movement or the force that sets something moving, and by extension the deciding weight that tips a balance. That sense of a tipping, decisive influence is why momentum came to mean importance or consequence as well as physical motion. English borrowed moment in the medieval period to mean both a tiny slice of time and a thing of weight or significance, and from that second meaning writers coined momentous in the early 1600s by adding the adjective ending -ous, literally 'full of moment'. So a momentous decision is one that carries great weight, the same metaphorical weight Latin speakers heard in momentum. The spelling trap lives in the middle: it is built on 'moment', so the unstressed second syllable is spelled with an e (mo-MEN-tous), and the ending is the ordinary -ous, not -us.

How the word is built

• moment (from Latin momentum: movement, importance)
• -ous (adjective suffix: full of)