suspend

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English suspenden,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French suspendre, also sospendre,^[5][4][2][6] or directly from its source Latin suspendō (“to hang up; to interrupt, set aside”),^[5][3][4][7] from sus-, a form of sub- (“up from under”),^[4][6][3] and pendō (“to cause to hang, weigh”),^[4][6][8] from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pen- (“to draw, stretch, spin”).^[4][8] The Anglo-Norman verb is recorded from the early 12th century, for raising, hanging and suspending from office.^[9] The Latin verb also gave Italian sospendere and Spanish suspender,^[5] and pendant and depend come from the same simple verb.^[10][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

To debar someone for a time from an office or privilege, and to put a stop to something for a time: about 1290, in the life of Thomas Becket in the South English Legendary.^[5] Barnhart and Etymonline date the word to about 1300.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that to suspend something is etymologically to hang it up;^[10] in English, however, the figurative senses of stopping and debarring came first, and the literal sense, to hang something up, appears only in the early 15th century,^[5][3][4] first in a surgical text of about 1425 describing the membrane hung from the skull.^[2] In Wyclif (about 1380) the verb was used for putting a church under interdict, a sense now obsolete.^[5] From 1535 a law could be suspended,^[5] from 1553, in Latimer's sermons, a judgement,^[3][4] and then from the 1570s the verb could be intransitive, to stop for a time.^[4] Johnson (1755) gave "to hang" as its first sense.^[12] Suspenders, for braces, is American, from 1810.^[3][13]

Timeline

• c. 1290 – to debar from office; to put a stop to for a time.^[5]
• c. 1380 – to put a church under interdict (obsolete by 1561).^[5]
• c. 1425 – to hang up.^[2]
• 1535 – to make a law inoperative for a time.^[5]
• 1553 – to hold one's judgement undetermined.^[3]
• 1566 – to put off, postpone.^[5]
• 1570s – intransitive, to stop for a time.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To bar someone for a time from an office, school, team or privilege, usually as a punishment: The club suspended two players for fighting.^[6][14][5]
2. To stop something for a time or make it inoperative: The airline suspended flights during the storm.^[6][14][5]
3. To put off or hold in abeyance: to suspend judgement, a suspended sentence.^[14][6][5]
4. To hang something from above so that it can move freely: A lantern was suspended from the ceiling.^[14][6][7]
5. (chiefly passive) To keep something floating in a fluid or the air: Dust was suspended in the sunbeam.^[14][6]
6. (chemistry) To disperse particles through a fluid as a suspension.^[14][6]

Word family

• suspendible
• suspendibility
• resuspend

Related words

• suspense
• suspension
• suspender
• pendant
• depend
• pending

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
10. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins