Stoic

How to spell stoic

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stoic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stoic mean?

1. adjectiveEnduring pain, hardship, or difficulty without showing feelings or complaining.
2. nounA person who remains calm and uncomplaining despite pain or hardship.

Stoic in a sentence

• adjective

  She stayed stoic throughout the long and painful recovery.

• noun

  As a true stoic, she refused to let the bad news rattle her.

• adjective

  He gave a stoic shrug when the deal collapsed and simply started again.

• noun

  My grandfather was a stoic who never mentioned how much his work had cost him.

Where does stoic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek noun stoa, which literally meant a covered walkway or porch with columns. In Athens around 300 BCE, the philosopher Zeno of Citium taught his followers under one such colonnade, the Stoa Poikile or 'painted porch', and so his school of thought came to be called Stoic after the building itself rather than after any person. The Stoics held that a wise person should accept whatever happens calmly and master the passions, and over centuries that teaching gave the ordinary English word its sense of unflinching endurance. Latin took the term as stoicus, and English borrowed it in the late 1300s, at first naming the ancient philosophers and later describing anyone who bears pain or trouble without complaint. The spelling trap is the quiet 'oi' pair pronounced as two sounds, oh-ick, a reminder that the word grew from a Greek place, not a single root meaning calm.

How the word is built

• stoic (from Greek Stoa, the painted porch where the philosophers taught)
• -ic (adjective/noun suffix)