Substantial

How to spell substantial

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce substantial

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does substantial mean?

1. adjectiveLarge in amount, size, value, or importance.
2. adjectiveStrongly made, solid, and able to withstand wear or pressure.

Substantial in a sentence

• The renovation required a substantial investment of both time and money.

• The old farmhouse was a substantial stone building that had survived a century of storms.

• They inherited a substantial sum from their late aunt.

• The workshop bench was substantial enough to take the weight of a car engine.

Where does substantial come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin substantia, meaning 'substance' or 'essence', which was itself formed from substare, 'to stand firm' or 'to stand under', combining sub 'under' with stare 'to stand'. The idea was of something that stands underneath appearances and gives a thing its real being, so substantia named the underlying matter of which something is made. English took it up through Old French in the 1300s, first in the sense of having genuine substance or real existence, and the meaning broadened to cover anything large, solid, or considerable in amount. The same stare root, 'to stand', sits inside a crowd of relatives such as 'stand', 'stable', 'circumstance', and 'constant'. Remembering that buried stant (the 'stand' part) explains the spelling: the middle is -stan-, not -sten-, even though the unstressed vowel sounds vague.

How the word is built

• sub- (under)
• stant (from Latin stare, to stand)
• -ial (adjective suffix); literally 'standing under', i.e. having real substance