Patience

//ˈpeɪʃəns// name, noun

name, noun ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of being patient. uncountable, usually

    "Musical perfection requires practice and a lot of patience."

  2. 2
    a card game played by one person wordnet
  3. 3
    Any of various card games that can be played by one person. uncountable, usually
  4. 4
    good-natured tolerance of delay or incompetence wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A female given name from English.

    "Meg had named it Patience. "But why?" he had exclaimed, not liking the name at all. "Patience is my favourite virtue," she had replied, "and we can call her Patty for short.""

Synonyms

All synonyms
forbearancesolitaireacceptanceapplicationassiduityassiduousness

Example

More examples

"I am losing my patience with you."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Inherited from Middle English pacience, from Old French pacience (modern French patience), from Latin patientia (“suffering; endurance, patience”), from patiens, present active participle of patior (“suffer, experience, wait”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *peh₁- (“to hurt”). Displaced native Old English ġeþyld.

Etymology 2

From patience, a virtue name first used by Puritans in the sixteenth century.

Related phrases

lose patiencepatience dockpatience is a virtuepatience of Jobpatience of Mother Teresapatience of a saintpatience of an angeltest someone's patiencetry someone's patiencecard gameclock patiencegarden patience

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.