Tendon

How to spell tendon

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tendon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tendon mean?

1. nounA tough band of fibrous tissue that connects a muscle to a bone.

Tendon in a sentence

• The runner tore a tendon in her right ankle during the marathon.

• The surgeon explained that a damaged tendon can take months to heal.

Where does tendon come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Medieval Latin tendo, with the stem tendon-, which described the cord-like tissue that stretches between muscle and bone. That noun was built on the classical Latin verb tendere, meaning 'to stretch' or 'to extend', because a tendon visibly tightens and pulls when a muscle contracts. English adopted it in the late 1500s and early 1600s through the language of anatomy and medicine, partly under the influence of French tendon. The same tendere root spreads widely through English: it sits inside 'tense', 'extend', 'tendency', and 'tent' (a stretched cloth). Knowing that the core idea is 'stretch' helps explain the spelling, since the word keeps the plain -tend- of stretch rather than any softer or doubled form.

How the word is built

• tend- (from Latin tendere: to stretch)
• -on (noun suffix)