Skip to the index
Etymon Yard A working herbarium of Latin and Greek roots

Root

ten / tain / tin

to hold, to keep

Level
Intermediate
Published
Author
By The Lexicon Desk
Origin
Latin

Latin tenere, "to hold", is behind contain, maintain, retain, obtain and a dozen more — the family is so large that English speakers use several of its members every day without noticing they are related. The spellings -tain, -ten and -tent all come from the same verb by different routes.

Branch diagram of ten / tain / tin, generated from the chain of forms
Branch diagram generated from this entry’s chain of forms; branches open left to right.

Etymology tree

Open any stage for the note attached to it.

  1. 01 Proto-Indo-European *ten-

    to stretch, to pull tight

    The base means stretching rather than holding; holding came to be expressed by the same verb because a stretched thing is held taut.

  2. 02 Latin tenere

    to hold, to keep, to grasp

    A second-conjugation verb whose compounds are everywhere in English. Its own relatives include tenax (tenacious) and tendere (to stretch), which split into a whole separate family.

  3. 03 Latin contentus, retentus

    held together; held back

    The past participle -tentus is the source of content, patent, intent and extent, all of them "held" in some direction.

  4. 04 Old French tenir, -tenir

    to hold

    French shifted the vowel to -tenir, which is why English has both -tain (maintain, contain) and -ten (retention, tenant) spellings.

  5. 05 Middle English ten- / tain-

    hold, keep

    One of the most productive Latin roots in English because Latin used tenere for every kind of keeping, from land to opinions.

8 words · branching from the last stage

Stage by stage

# Stage Form What it meant
1 Proto-Indo-European *ten- to stretch, to pull tight
2 Latin tenere to hold, to keep, to grasp
3 Latin contentus, retentus held together; held back
4 Old French tenir, -tenir to hold
5 Middle English ten- / tain- hold, keep

The prefix does the work

This root rewards a mechanical approach more than almost any other in English. Take the verb tenere and add a Latin preposition, and the meaning is almost always predictable: con- (together) plus tenere is contain, re- (back) is retain, ob- (against, toward) is obtain, sus- (from below, a form of sub-) is sustain, per- (through) is pertain.

A handful of members have drifted far enough to need separate learning. Entertain originally meant to hold someone in a certain state of mind, and only later came to mean to amuse. Maintain meant to hold in the hand, which is why it still suggests effort: you maintain a car or an argument, and both take work.

The -tent nouns

The past participle of tenere produced a set of abstract nouns that are now completely independent words. Content is what is held within something; patent is what lies open (from patere, to lie open, with the ten- element arrived by analogy); intent is a holding toward; extent is a holding out; portent is a holding forth of meaning.

Patent is the odd one out etymologically — it comes from Latin patens, "lying open", and its -tent ending is a later respelling under the influence of the ten- family. It is a good reminder that not every word containing a familiar letter sequence contains the root.

  • content — held together, hence what a thing contains
  • intent — a holding toward, hence a purpose
  • extent — a holding out, hence a size or degree
  • retention — a holding back, in medicine and in business alike
  • tenant — one who holds land
  • tenure — the holding of an office or property, and in academia a permanent post

Holdings in law and school

The legal sense is old and central: tenant, tenure, tenement and the whole apparatus of property law built on the idea that a person holds land rather than owns it absolutely. Tenure still means the conditions under which something is held, and in universities it means a post that is held permanently.

Tenacious and tenacity keep the physical sense of gripping, and are used both literally and figuratively: a tenacious grip, a tenacious memory, a tenacious negotiator. The root's original meaning, "to stretch", survives most purely in the separate family around tendere — tension, extend, tendon — which is worth learning alongside this one.

Kindred family

English words grown from this root, with the part of speech and a plain gloss.

Word Part of speech Gloss
contain verb to hold together inside
maintain verb to hold in the hand; to keep up
tenant noun one who holds land
retention noun the act of holding back
tenacious adjective holding on tightly
content noun that which is held within
detain verb to hold away; to keep back
abstain verb to hold oneself from