Stamina

How to spell stamina

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce stamina

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stamina mean?

1. nounThe physical or mental strength to sustain prolonged effort or activity.

Stamina in a sentence

• Marathon training gradually builds the stamina needed to finish the race.

• The long negotiations tested the stamina of everyone at the table.

Where does stamina come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Stamina comes from Latin and was originally the plural of stamen, a word that literally meant 'thread', specifically the upright warp threads stretched on an upright loom. In Roman thought the same image carried a deeper sense: the Fates were imagined spinning out the threads of each person's life, so the stamina were the threads that determined how long and how strong a life would run. When the word came into English in the 1600s it was first used in a similar way, to mean the basic strands or rudiments that something is made of, the essential underpinnings. From there it narrowed to the modern idea of the body's underlying strength and capacity to endure effort. The Latin singular stamen still survives separately as a botanical term for the thread-like pollen-bearing organ of a flower, which is a useful clue to why this word keeps its single 'm' and ends in '-ina'.

How the word is built

• stamin- (from Latin stamen: thread, warp of a loom)
• -a (plural ending reanalysed as singular)