Painless

How to spell painless

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce painless

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does painless mean?

1. adjectiveCausing or involving no physical pain or difficulty.

Painless in a sentence

• The dentist promised a quick and painless procedure.

• Switching banks turned out to be a painless process online.

Where does painless come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word pairs the noun 'pain' with the native English suffix '-less', meaning 'without' or 'free from'. The noun 'pain' came into English in the 1200s through Old French 'peine', which traced back to the Latin 'poena', meaning a 'penalty' or 'punishment'; the same root gives us 'penalty' and 'penal'. So the earliest sense of pain was closer to a legally imposed punishment than to simple physical hurt, and only later did it settle on the modern idea of bodily or mental suffering. The suffix '-less' is thoroughly Germanic, descending from Old English 'leas', meaning 'free from' or 'lacking', the same element seen in 'fearless' and 'hopeless'. Combined, painless has meant 'causing or involving no pain' since at least the 1500s. A useful spelling reminder is that the word keeps the full 'pain' intact and simply adds the single -less ending, so there is no doubled letter to worry about.

How the word is built

• pain (suffering, hurt)
• -less (without, free from)