durance

Etymology

From Old French durance, from durer (“to last”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈdjʊəɹəns/

Noun

durance (countable and uncountable, plural durances)

1. (obsolete) Duration.
2. (obsolete) Endurance.
   • XIX century, Gerard Manley Hopkins, No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief

     O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

     Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap

     May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small

     Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep, [...]

3. (archaic) Imprisonment; forced confinement.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.5:

     What bootes it him from death to be unbownd, / To be captived in endlesse duraunce / Of sorrow and despeyre without aleggeaunce!

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society 1973, p. 373:

     the parson concurred, saying, the Lord forbid he should be instrumental in committing an innocent person to durance.

Anagrams

• dauncer, unarced, uncared, unraced

Etymology

durer +‎ -ance.

Noun

durance f (oblique plural durances, nominative singular durance, nominative plural durances)

1. duration (length with respect to time)
   • circa 1289, Jacques d'Amiens, L'art d'amours

     Si prent on tost tele acointance

     Qui puet avoir peu de durance