Patient

How to spell patient

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce patient

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does patient mean?

1. adjectiveAble to wait calmly or to endure delay, difficulty, or annoyance without becoming upset.
2. nounA person receiving medical treatment or care from a doctor, nurse, or hospital.

Patient in a sentence

• adjective

  The queue was long, but she stayed patient throughout.

• noun

  The nurse checked on every patient before the morning shift ended.

• adjective

  A good teacher remains patient when a student struggles with a topic.

• noun

  The doctor reviewed the patient records before the appointment.

Where does patient come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb pati, which literally meant 'to suffer' or 'to endure'. Its present participle was patiens, describing someone in the act of bearing or putting up with something. The word travelled into English through Old French during the 1300s, carrying the adjectival sense of calmly enduring delay or hardship; the noun sense, a sick person who 'suffers' an illness and bears the care of a physician, grew from the very same idea. The original notion of suffering still survives in close relatives such as 'passion' and 'compassion', which share that pati root. Knowing that the spelling rests on pati, not 'pay', helps explain why the middle is -ti- rather than the 'sh' sound it makes, and why the ending is -ent rather than -ant.

How the word is built

• pati- (from Latin pati: to suffer, endure)
• -ent (suffix forming an adjective or noun)