Recent

How to spell recent

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce recent

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does recent mean?

1. adjectiveHappening or done a short time ago; belonging to the immediate past.

Recent in a sentence

• The recent rise in fuel prices hit our monthly budget hard.

• Her recent promotion came with a larger office and a pay rise.

Where does recent come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin recens, which literally meant 'fresh', 'new', or 'young', and was often used of food, news, or anything not long made. The Romans applied it to things still in their first state, untouched by age, and the sense of something belonging to the immediate past grew naturally out of that idea of freshness. English borrowed it in the late 1500s, partly through French recent, and settled it into the meaning we use today: belonging to a time only just gone by. Geologists later pressed the same word into service for the most current span of Earth's history. The spelling trap is the soft middle 'c', which sounds like an 's' yet stays a 'c', and the unstressed final syllable that can tempt writers toward '-ant'.

How the word is built

• recent- (from Latin recens: fresh, new, young)
• adopted as an English adjective