duration
Pluraldurations
- 1A length of time, or a particular interval during which something continues.
The duration of the meeting surprised everyone, running well past lunch.
Scientists recorded the duration of each tremor in seconds.
Similarlength, span, period, extent
Note
The everyday sense, whose spelling runs back through Middle English duracioun and late Old French duracion to Medieval Latin dūrātiō. It keeps company with whole-span words: the entire duration of the advert break, the duration of the flight. It can also follow a measurement with no of at all. Paul Bigland, writing in RAIL in 2022, describes a trip of less than 30 minutes duration.
- 2The length of time until the present situation, especially an ongoing war, comes to an end.
Factories switched to making weapons for the duration of the conflict.
She volunteered as a nurse for the duration, returning home only when peace came.
Note
Here the word stands alone: for the duration, with nothing after it, and only in the singular. The end it waits for is left unnamed because everyone already knows what it is, usually a war, so "rationing will last at least for the duration" needs no further words. Add of and a named event, and the phrase leans back toward the ordinary span of time.
- 3A measure of how sensitive a financial asset's price is to changes in interest rates, based on the timing of its payments.
The fund manager shortened the portfolio's duration to reduce interest-rate risk.
A zero-coupon bond's duration equals its time to maturity.
Note
Finance kept the everyday word because the measure really is a length of time. Averaging when a bond's interest and principal payments fall due gives a figure in years. That figure doubles as a risk gauge: the longer it is, the more the price moves when rates change. Managers speak of shortening or lengthening a portfolio's duration. Do not confuse it with maturity, which counts only to the final payment.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English duracioun, from late Old French duracion, from Medieval Latin dūrātiō.