Etymologically
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suspend

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Pronunciation

  • /səsˈpɛnd/[1]

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

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