Patience

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈpeɪʃəns/

Definitions

1. The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, difficulty, or annoyance without becoming upset or anxious
2. The quality of maintaining calm and composure when facing delays or challenges
3. The power to stay serene and untroubled during times of waiting or adversity

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "patience" is that its core meaning is suffering. Latin "patientia" meant "suffering; endurance," and it grew from "patiens," the present participle of "pati," to suffer or undergo. Calm waiting was, at root, simply the experience of enduring something painful, and the modern sense of gentle composure developed from that endurance. The word reached English through Old French "pacience" (modern French "patience") and came into Middle English in that form. It displaced the Old English word "geþyld," which is still the ancestor of today's "forbearance" in spirit, though not in form. Its distant roots go back to a Proto-Indo-European base meaning "to hurt," which is why a word for waiting calmly shares ancestry with words about pain.

Synonyms: forbearance, tolerance, endurance, calmness, composure

Antonyms: impatience, agitation, frustration, annoyance, irritation