Vast

How to spell vast

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce vast

What does vast mean?

1. adjectiveExtremely large in size, extent, or amount.

Vast in a sentence

• The company manages a vast network of suppliers across three continents.

• A vast desert stretched to the horizon beyond the highway.

Where does vast come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin vastus, which meant 'empty', 'desolate', or 'immense', the same root that gives us 'waste' and 'devastate'. In its earliest Latin use it described an unoccupied, boundless stretch of land, and the sense of sheer emptiness gradually shaded into one of sheer hugeness. English borrowed it during the late 1500s, most likely through French, settling on the meaning 'very great in size or extent'. It is worth noticing that the closely related 'waste' came into English by a different, more roundabout route and so kept its 'w', while 'vast' kept the original Latin 'v'. Because the modern word is short and phonetically regular, the spelling rarely causes trouble; the only echo of its emptier origins survives in the kindred word 'devastate'.

How the word is built

• vast (from Latin vastus: empty, immense)