Staunch

How to spell staunch

7 letters · 1 syllable

14 of the 67 people asked to spell staunch in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce staunch

What does staunch mean?

1. adjectiveVery loyal, committed, and unwavering in support or belief.
2. verbTo stop or restrict the flow of something, especially blood or liquid.

Staunch in a sentence

• adjective

  He remained a staunch supporter of the local club through every losing season.

• verb

  The medic pressed a clean cloth to the cut to staunch the bleeding.

• adjective

  The committee found a staunch ally in the new finance director.

• verb

  Sandbags were stacked along the door to staunch the rising water.

Where does staunch come from?

Language of origin: French

Staunch travelled into English in the 1300s from the Old French estanche, an adjective meaning 'watertight' or 'firm', alongside the related verb estanchier, 'to stop a flow'. These French forms grew out of an unrecorded Vulgar Latin verb, reconstructed as stanticare, which is generally linked to the Latin stare, meaning 'to stand' or 'to be still'; the underlying idea is something held fast and unmoving, such as a barrel that holds water or a wound that no longer bleeds. The earliest English uses were close to the original sense of 'leak-proof' and 'standing firm', and from that physical steadiness the now common figurative meaning developed: a person who is loyal, dependable, and unwavering. The very same root produced the verb sense of stopping a flow of blood, which in American English is often spelled 'stanch' to keep the two functions visibly apart. Because both the adjective and verb derive from one French source, the British and Canadian preference for 'staunch' in both roles preserves that shared ancestry. The trap in the spelling is the silent, almost invisible nature of the 'au' and the '-nch' cluster, which writers sometimes reduce to 'stanch' or 'stantch'.

How the word is built

• staunch (single root from Old French estanche: watertight, firm); no separable prefix or suffix

People who misspell staunch also struggle with

Of the Spelling Garden players who got staunch wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.

• connoisseur 93% of them got it wrong