Oblivion

How to spell oblivion

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce oblivion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does oblivion mean?

1. nounThe state of being completely forgotten, or of ceasing to exist entirely.

Oblivion in a sentence

• The once-famous brand faded into oblivion within a decade.

• Those old tax records were left to gather dust and slip into oblivion.

Where does oblivion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Oblivion comes from the Latin noun oblivio, oblivionis, which meant 'forgetfulness' or 'a state of being forgotten'. That noun was built on the verb oblivisci, meaning 'to forget' or literally 'to be smoothed over', perhaps related to levis 'smooth', as though a memory were wiped flat like wax. English took the word in the late 1300s through Old French oblivion, at first carrying the legal sense of an official pardon that wiped offences from memory, as in an 'act of oblivion'. Over time the meaning broadened to the modern senses of total forgetting and of nothingness or destruction. The spelling keeps the Latin shape closely, and the awkward part for writers is the unstressed middle: the 'liv' is pronounced clearly but the surrounding vowels blur, and people sometimes drop the second 'i' or double a consonant that should stay single.

How the word is built

• ob- (over, against)
• liv- (from Latin oblivisci: to forget)
• -ion (noun-forming suffix)