Word.ws English Dictionary

elance

/ɪˈlæns/

elance verb: to throw like a lance; to hurl.

Verb

elance (third-person singular simple present elances, present participle elancing, simple past and past participle elanced)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To throw like a lance; to hurl.
    • Iö! while thy unerring hand elanc'd / Another, and another dart; the people / Joyfully repeated Iö! Iö Pean! / Elance the dart, Apollo: for the ſafety, / And health of man, gracious thy mother bore thee.a. 1722 (date written), Matthew Prior, “The Second Hymn of Callimachus to Apollo”, in The Poetical Works of Matthew Prior […], volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan, […], published 1779, →OCLC...

Forms of elance

third-person singular presentelances
present participleelancing
past participleelanced
pastelanced

Origin of elance

From French élancer (Old French eslancier), from es- (Latin ex) + French lancer (“to dart, throw”), from lance.

Questions about elance

What does elance mean?
Elance means to throw like a lance; to hurl.
What part of speech is elance?
Elance is a verb.
How do you pronounce elance?
Elance is pronounced /ɪˈlæns/.
What is the past tense of elance?
The past tense of elance is elanced.

Words near elance in the dictionary

  1. Elamitish
  2. Elamo-
  3. Elamo-Dravidian
  4. elamping
  5. elan
  6. elance
  7. elanced
  8. elances
  9. elancing
  10. eland
  11. elands

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: elance (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.

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