patience

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The ability to stay calm and wait without getting angry or upset.

   Teaching young children requires a lot of patience.

2. 2
   noun

   A card game played by one person alone.

   She passed the rainy afternoon playing patience.

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 Old English ġeþyld.

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