durance

See also: Durance

English edit

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

durance (countable and uncountable, plural durances)

(archaic) Imprisonment; forced confinement.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
  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, published 1973, page 373:
  the parson concurred, saying, the Lord forbid he should be instrumental in committing an innocent person to durance.
(obsolete) Duration.
(obsolete) Endurance, durability.
- c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], page 49, column 2:
  Fal. Thou ſay'ſt true Lad: is not my Hoſteſſe of the Tauerne a moſt ſweet Wench? / Prin. As is the hony, my old Lad of the Caſtle: and is not a Buffe Ierkin a moſt ſweet robe of durance?
- 1885–1887, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “[Poem 41]”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, published 1918, →OCLC, stanza 2, page 63:
  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.

(archaic) imprisonment

“durance”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
“durance”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
“durance, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

durer +‎ -ance.

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

duration (length with respect to time)
- c. 1289, Jacques d'Amiens, L'art d'amours:
  Si prent on tost tele acointance
  Qui puet avoir peu de durance
  (please add an English translation of this quotation)