lent
noun
Simple meaning
A period of the ecclesiastical year preceding Easter, traditionally involving temporary abstention from certain foods and pleasures.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
lehntIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈlɛnt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
christianity
A period of the ecclesiastical year preceding Easter, traditionally involving temporary abstention from certain foods and pleasures.
Roman Catholicism
The 46 days preceding Easter, reckoned as 40 days by excluding Sundays.
Eastern Christianity
A period of 40 weekdays from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday
Eastern Christianity
The 40 days preceding Lazarus Saturday, the Saturday preceding Holy Week.
Alternative letter-case form of Lent.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A period of the ecclesiastical year preceding Easter, traditionally involving temporary abstention from certain foods and pleasures.
Used this way, lent is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use lent
- “I lent her 10 euros to pay for the train tickets, and she paid me back the next day.”verb
- “Hezekiah gave up vaping for Lent.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Lily of eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans with broad funnel-shaped white flowers.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.