Stagnation

How to spell stagnation

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce stagnation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stagnation mean?

1. nounA state of being still and not flowing or growing, leading to a lack of progress or development.

Stagnation in a sentence

• Years of economic stagnation left wages frozen across the region.

• She blamed the project's stagnation on indecisive management.

Where does stagnation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb stagnare, meaning 'to form a pool of standing water' or 'to be still', which was built on the noun stagnum, a pond, swamp, or pool of motionless water. The literal image is therefore water that does not flow and so grows stale, an idea that easily lent itself to figurative use. English took the verb 'stagnate' and the related noun in the seventeenth century, and from the start the words carried the metaphor of something that has stopped moving and gone sluggish. Today 'stagnation' is used most often of economies, careers, and ideas that fail to grow or progress, though the underlying picture of a still, lifeless pond is never far away. The spelling stays close to the Latin stem, which is why the silent flow of the unstressed syllables (stag-NA-tion) can trip writers who expect it to sound out more obviously.

How the word is built

• stagn- (from Latin stagnum: standing pool of water)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix)