constant

UK/ˈkɒnstənt/US/ˈkɑnstənt/

adjectiveB25 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,454 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: constants

Constant means going on all the time and never letting up. The constant drip of a tap two rooms away, constant traffic noise through a thin window, a constant dull ache in one tooth.

As a noun it is a value that does not move: in science and maths, a constant is a quantity held the same while everything around it changes — the speed of light, the gravitational constant. Programmers declare a constant when a number must stay put and nobody should edit it. There is an older, warmer sense used about people: a constant friend is one who does not waver, and the quality is constancy. Keep the near-neighbours straight — constant is unchanging or unceasing, continuous is without a break, continual is over and over again. And notice the tilt: constant complaints, constant interruptions, constant delays. When it describes a repeated thing, the word almost always brings irritation with it.

Definitions of constant

1adjectivecontinualHappening all the time; never stopping.B2~41%
“She works through constant interruptions and finishes on time anyway.”
synonyms: continual, ceaseless, relentless
2adjectivesteadyStaying at the same level or value; not changing.B2~2%
“Keep the oven at a constant temperature for the first hour.”
synonyms: steady, uniform
3nounconstantA quantity that is held the same while other quantities change.B2~53%
“In that equation g is a constant and everything else is measured.”
4nounsituationThe one thing in a situation that never alters.B2~2%
“The only constant in that house was the smell of coffee.”
5adjectivefaithfulFaithful and unwavering, said of a person.C1~2%
“He was a constant friend for forty years, in every weather.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

constant is a fixed quantity.

Where it comes from

Latin cōnstō meant "to stand firm", and its present participle gave constans — standing firm, not shifting. Old French passed the word to Middle English with its shape barely touched, and it pushed the older native word out of use. Standing firm is still the whole idea, whether it is a friend who does not waver, a temperature that will not budge, or a number in an equation that stays put while the others move.

Latin
constantem
Old French
constant
Middle English
constant
English, today
constant

Built from

consto · Latin — to stand firm

From Middle English constant, from Old French constant, from Latin constantem, accusative of constans, from consto (“to stand firm”). Displaced native singal.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Academic English, A Man Called Ove, Computing & Code

First appears in chapter 39 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

constant in the wild

Alternatively, e can be called Napier's constant after John Napier.
E (mathematical constant)
A physical constant is a non-varying quantity that appears in a theory or model of some physical phenomena.
Physical constant
Some physical constants appear in models of fundamental phenomena and impact many parts of physics.
Physical constant
The Avogadro constant NA is also the factor that converts the average mass m(X) of one particle of a substance to its molar mass M(X).
Avogadro constant
The Hubble constant can also be stated as a relative rate of expansion.
Hubble's law

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the consto family

constant constantly

constant — used about once every 333 pages · #2,454 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of constant

1adjectivecontinualHappening all the time; never stopping.B2~41%

“She works through constant interruptions and finishes on time anyway.”

synonyms: continual, ceaseless, relentless

2adjectivesteadyStaying at the same level or value; not changing.B2~2%

“Keep the oven at a constant temperature for the first hour.”

synonyms: steady, uniform

3nounconstantA quantity that is held the same while other quantities change.B2~53%

“In that equation g is a constant and everything else is measured.”

4nounsituationThe one thing in a situation that never alters.B2~2%

“The only constant in that house was the smell of coffee.”

5adjectivefaithfulFaithful and unwavering, said of a person.C1~2%

“He was a constant friend for forty years, in every weather.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

constant is a fixed quantity.