Prolongment

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /pɹəˈlɒŋmənt/

Definitions

1. The process of making a timeframe last longer or be extended
2. The act of lengthening a period of time beyond its usual limits
3. A process by which the length of a certain time interval is increased

Etymology: "Prolongment" is a plain English formation: the verb "prolong" with the suffix "-ment" attached to it. "Prolong" itself came into English from Old French "prolonger," which traces back to Latin "prolongare," meaning to lengthen or extend in space or time. The suffix is where the longer story lies. The ending "-ment" descends from Latin "-mentum," a noun-forming element that turned verbs into nouns naming a result, a means, or an instrument, as in "documentum" or "monumentum." That Latin ending reached English by way of Old French "-ment," which carried it into Middle English, and English speakers kept adding it to verbs ever since. The Latin suffix itself goes back much further, to a Proto-Indo-European form, which is why so many English nouns ending in "-ment" feel older than they are. Its role here is quite ordinary: "prolongment" simply names the act or result of prolonging. Because the suffix is productive, English speakers could form the word whenever they needed a noun for the process, rather than inheriting it from an earlier stock of terms.