Vent

How to spell vent

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce vent

What does vent mean?

1. nounAn opening that allows air, gas, or fluid to pass in or out.
2. verbTo give free expression to a strong emotion, or to release air or pressure through an opening.

Vent in a sentence

• noun

  Warm air poured out of the heating vent above the desk.

• verb

  He needed to vent his frustration after the long meeting.

• noun

  She cleaned the dust from the kitchen vent once a month.

• verb

  The valve will vent excess steam before the pressure climbs too high.

Where does vent come from?

Language of origin: French

The word traces back to the Latin ventus, meaning 'wind', which passed into Old French as vent. English took it up in the late Middle Ages, first as a verb meaning to give air or wind an outlet, and the noun for such an opening followed naturally. The sense of releasing built-up feelings, as in venting frustration, is a figurative extension of letting trapped air escape, and it became common in modern usage. There is a tangled second thread here: the slit at the back of a jacket, also called a vent, comes partly from the Old French fente, a slit, from Latin findere 'to split', whose spelling was later pulled toward the more familiar vent. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, the spelling has stayed simple and stable across the centuries.

How the word is built

• vent (from Latin ventus: wind, via Old French)