Interminable

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ɪnˈtɜː(ɹ).mɪn.ə.bəl/

Definitions

Seemingly endless or impossibly long, often to the point of causing weariness or frustration
Appearing to have no end or conclusion, causing tedium through excessive length or duration
Stretching on indefinitely in a way that exhausts patience and seems to lack any natural stopping point

Etymology: Around the year 524, in a cell awaiting execution, the Roman statesman Boethius wrote what became the most quoted definition of eternity in the Middle Ages: "interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio," the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of endless life. The word he chose for that endlessness belongs to Late Latin, and in his hands it described God. Its roots are much older and more earthbound. Latin "terminus" meant a boundary stone, the marker set in a field to show where one man's land stopped and another's began. The Romans worshipped these stones as a god, Terminus, and told how he alone refused to make way when the temple of Jupiter was built on the Capitoline Hill, so his stone was left standing inside it, under an opening in the roof. From "terminus" came "terminare," to set bounds or bring to an end, and from that "terminabilis," able to be ended. Christian Latin writers added the negating "in-" to describe what had no limit at all. The word passed into French as "interminable" and from there, along with the Latin original, into Middle English in the late 1300s. Its first home in English was close to its Latin one: Chaucer, translating Boethius around 1380, rendered that famous definition of eternity as possession "of lif interminable." For centuries it kept that theological weight, applied to God's being and to eternal joy or torment. Then it slowly came down to earth. A word that had once measured the life of the divine became the natural way to describe a sermon, a meeting or a queue that only felt as if it would never end.

Synonyms: endless, ceaseless, unending

Antonyms: finite, temporary