Temporary

How to spell temporary

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce temporary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does temporary mean?

1. adjectiveLasting for only a limited time; not permanent.

Temporary in a sentence

• The office hired a temporary receptionist to cover the busy summer period.

• A temporary fix on the leaking pipe held until the plumber arrived.

Where does temporary come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin temporarius, meaning 'lasting only for a time', which was built on tempus (stem tempor-), the ordinary Latin word for 'time' or 'season'. The same tempus root gives English a whole family of time words, including 'tempo', 'temporal', and even 'contemporary', where con- adds the sense of 'together in time'. English adopted temporary in the sixteenth century, and from the start it carried the idea of something that holds good only for a limited stretch rather than permanently. The spelling trap lives in the middle: that unstressed -po-ra- sequence collapses in speech, so writers often drop the second vowel and produce 'temporay' or 'temprary'. Holding on to the original tempor- root, the same chunk you can hear clearly in 'temporal', is the reliable way to keep the spelling intact.

How the word is built

• tempor- (from Latin tempus, tempor-: time)
• -ary (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to')