Tolerant

How to spell tolerant

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce tolerant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tolerant mean?

1. adjectiveWilling to accept opinions, behaviour, or people that differ from one's own without becoming hostile.
2. adjectiveAble to endure or withstand a particular condition, substance, or amount of something without harm.

Tolerant in a sentence

• The new manager is remarkably tolerant of unconventional working styles.

• These alpine plants are highly tolerant of frost and poor soil.

• A tolerant society allows people of many faiths to live side by side.

• The patient proved unusually tolerant of the strong medication.

Where does tolerant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb tolerare, which meant 'to bear', 'to endure', or 'to put up with' a burden or hardship. The present-participle form tolerans gave rise to the stem toler-ant-, literally describing someone or something that is in the act of enduring. English picked up tolerant in the late 1700s, largely through French tolérant, at a time when debates about religious and political freedom made the idea of putting up with differing views especially fashionable. The very same Latin root sits inside the everyday words 'tolerate' and 'toleration', and it also surfaces in the engineering term 'tolerance', the allowable amount of variation a part can endure. The spelling trap is the unstressed ending: because the final syllable sounds like a vague 'unt', writers must remember it is spelled -ant (from tolerans) and not -ent.

How the word is built

• toler- (from Latin tolerare: to bear, endure)
• -ant (adjective suffix meaning 'tending to')