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''end'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904120411-00-⌔

end - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

end (plural ends)

  • The terminal point of something in space or time.
    • ✤ they followed him… into a sort of a central hall; out of which they could dimly see other long tunnel-like passages branching, passages mysterious and without apparent end.1
    • ✤ I told him about everything I could think of; and what I couldn’t think of he did. He asked about six questions during my yarn, but every question had a point to it. At the end he bowed and thanked me once more. As a thanker he was main-truck high; I never see anybody so polite.2
    • ✤ An epidemic of the disease started in Lü-shun at the end of 1927 and extended to April 1928, involving 271 cases with 14 deaths (Migai, 1928).3
    • ✤ At the end of the garden there was a beautiful fountain.
    • ✤ At the end of the story, the main characters fall in love.
    • ✤ As it was a great play, the audience applauded at the end.
  • Share of joint responsibility.
    • ✤ Are you sure they’ll honor their end of the deal?
  • (by extension) The cessation of an effort, activity, state, or motion.
    • ✤ Is there no end to this madness?
    • ✤ The new electronic switching system means expanded service and an end to irritances such as cross-talk, line-hum, and being cut off in mid-conversation.4
  • (by extension, often with “the”) Death.
    • ✤ He met a terrible end in the jungle.
    • ✤ I hope the end comes quickly.
    • ✤ Confound your hidden falsehood, and award/Either of you to be the other’s end.5
    • ✤ A safe companion and an easy friend/Unblamed through life, lamented in thy end.6
    • ✤ Regulators and developers should consider the privacy risks. But more than anything, Sparrow thinks we should all reflect on how we prepare for the end. “My mother has late-stage cancer, she’s clearly thinking about her own death, and so she is going through a process of throwing out all the things she doesn’t want the kids to deal with and prepping her house,” he says.7
  • The most extreme point of an object, especially one that is longer than it is wide.
    • ✤ Hold the string at both ends.
    • ✤ My father always sat at the end of the table nearest the kitchen.
    • ✤ All the ends of the woꝛld ſhall remember, and turne vnto the Lord: and all the kinreds of the nations ſhall woꝛſhip befoꝛe thee.8
  • Result.
    • ✤ O that a man might know/The end of this day’s business ere it come!9
    • ✤ The end was that he was thought an archfool.10
  • A purpose, goal, or aim.
    • ✤ Synonym: purpose
    • ✤ For what end should I toil?
    • ✤ The end of our club is to advance conversation and friendship.
    • ✤ But, losing her, the End of Living lose.11
    • ✤ When every man is his own end, all things will come to a bad end.12
    • ✤ There is a long argument to prove that foreign conquest is not the end of the State, showing that many people took the imperialist view.13
  • (cricket) One of the two parts of the ground used as a descriptive name for half of the ground.
    • ✤ *The Pavillion End *
  • (American football) The position at the end of either the offensive or defensive line, a tight end, a split end, a defensive end.
    • ✤ Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven […].14
  • (curling) A period of play in which each team throws eight rocks, two per player, in alternating fashion.
  • (mathematics) An ideal point of a graph or other complex. See End (graph theory)
  • That which is left; a remnant; a fragment; a scrap.
    • ✤ *odds and ends *
    • ✤ I clothe my naked villainy/With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ,/And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.15
  • (weaving) A single warp thread.
    • ✤ Wind a warp of 459 ends 3¾ yd long, following the warp color order in Figure 1.16
  • (in the plural, slang, African-American Vernacular) Money.
    • ✤ Don’t give them your ends. You jack that shit!

Verb

end (third-person singular simple present ends, present participle ending, simple past and past participle ended)

  • (intransitive, ergative) To come to an end.
    • ✤ Is this movie never going to end?
    • ✤ The lesson will end when the bell rings.
    • ✤ The canyon ends abruptly on the east side of Roraima, and here a waterfall pours over an outcropping of crystal.17
  • (intransitive) To conclude; to bring something to an end.
    • ✤ The orchestra ended with a performance of Dvořák.
  • (transitive) To finish, terminate.
    • ✤ The referee blew the whistle to end the game.
    • ✤ And on the seventh day God ended his worke […]18
    • ✤ If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife19
    • ✤ But play the man, stand up and end you,/When your sickness is your soul.20
    • ✤ So, subject to the salvaging of serviceable parts, all five were withdrawn for breaking up in 1936-7, and thus ended one of the shortest histories of an important locomotive class on record.21
    • ✤ * Ending civil wars is hard. Hatreds within countries often run far deeper than between them. The fighting rarely sticks to battlefields, as it can do between states. Civilians are rarely spared. And there are no borders to fall back behind.*22

Etymology

From Middle English ende, from Old English ende, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡andī, from Proto-Germanic ﹡andijaz (“end”), from Proto-Indo-European ﹡h₂entíos (“forehead; front”), from ﹡h₂ent- (“face; forehead; front”), from ﹡h₂en- (“on, onto”).

The verb is from Middle English enden, endien, from Old English endian (“to end, to make an end of, complete, finish, abolish, destroy, come to an end, die”), from Proto-Germanic ﹡andijōną (“to finish, end”), denominative from ﹡andijaz.

Pronunciation

  • enPR: ĕnd, IPA: /ɛnd/
  • Audio (Received Pronunciation); “to end”: 🔊
  • Audio (General American): 🔊
  • Audio (General American): 🔊
  • Audio (Australia): 🔊
  • (dialectal, obsolete) enPR: ēnd, IPA: /iːnd/(corresponding to the form eend)23
  • (pin–pen merger) IPA: /ɪnd/
  • Homophone: Ind (pin–pen merger)
  • Rhymes: -ɛnd, -ɪnd

Printed 2026-09-04.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC: ↩

  2. 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter IV, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC: ↩

  3. 1946, Tsai-yu Hsiao, Epidemiology of the Diseases of Naval Importance in Manchuria ‎, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, →OCLC, page 20: ↩

  4. 1986, The Army Communicator, volume 11, number 2, page 46: ↩

  5. c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]: ↩

  6. 1732, Alexander Pope, (epitaph) On Mr. Gay, in Westminster Abbey: ↩

  7. 2025 May 3, Patricia Clarke, “You and me, we gonna live forever … as avatars, at least”, in The Observer ‎: ↩

  8. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 22:27: ↩

  9. 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V,]: ↩

  10. 1876, Great Britain. Public Record Office, John Sherren Brewer, Robert Henry Brodie, James Gairdner, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (volume 4, issue 3, part 2, page 3154) ↩

  11. 1675, John Dryden, chapter III, in Aureng-zebe: A Tragedy. […], London: […] T[homas] N[ewcomb] for Henry Herringman, […], published 1676, →OCLC: ↩

  12. 1825, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character, Aphorism VI, page 146: ↩

  13. 1946, Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, I.21: ↩

  14. 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN: ↩

  15. c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]: ↩

  16. 2026, Shelby Moravec, “Flight of the Dragonflies Scarf”, in Handwoven, volume XLVII, number 1, page 28: ↩

  17. 1989 May, Uwe George, “Venezuela’s Islands in Time”, in National Geographic, volume 175, number 5, page 542: ↩

  18. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 2:2: ↩

  19. c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]: ↩

  20. 1896, A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, XLV, lines 7-8: ↩

  21. 1949 May and June, R. A. H. Weight, “A Short-Lived Pacific Class”, in Railway Magazine, page 196: ↩

  22. 2013 November 9, “How to stop the fighting, sometimes”, in The Economist, volume 409, number 8861: ↩

  23. Bingham, Caleb (1808), “Improprieties in Pronunciation, common among the people of New-England”, in *The Child’s Companion; Being a Conciſe Spelling-book […] * ‎, 12th edition, Boston: Manning & Loring, →OCLC, page 75. ↩

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