Word.ws English Dictionary

durance

/ˈd͡ʒʊəɹəns/

durance noun: imprisonment; forced confinement.

Noun

durance (countable and uncountable, plural durances)

  1. (archaic) Imprisonment; forced confinement.
    • What bootes it him from death to be unbownd, / To be captived in endlesse duraunce / Of sorrow and despeyre without aleggeaunce!1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • the parson concurred, saying, the Lord forbid he should be instrumental in committing an innocent person to durance.1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 373
  2. (obsolete) Duration.
  3. (obsolete) Endurance, durability.
    • 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?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...
    • 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.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

Proper noun capitalized: Durance

the Durance

  1. A left tributary of the Rhône, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France.

Forms of durance

pluraldurances

Origin of durance

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

Borrowed from French Durance.

Words formed from durance

Questions about durance

What does durance mean?
Durance means imprisonment; forced confinement.
What part of speech is durance?
Durance can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce durance?
Durance is pronounced /ˈd͡ʒʊəɹəns/.
What is the plural of durance?
The plural of durance is durances.

Words near durance in the dictionary

  1. duraminisation
  2. duramycin
  3. duramycins
  4. Duran
  5. Duranbah
  6. durance
  7. durance vile
  8. durances
  9. Durancian
  10. durancy
  11. Durand

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: durance (page history and authors); Durance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “durance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/durance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.