Fortitude: meaning, example and synonyms
Fortituden. Courage and endurance in facing pain, hardship, or adversity over time.
Example
The polar expedition's survival owed less to its equipment than to the fortitude of a crew who endured months of darkness without despair.
- Part of speech
- noun
- Synonyms
- courage, endurance, resilience, grit
- Antonyms
- cowardice, timidity, faintheartedness, weakness
- Memory tip
- Fort = strong (as in fortress): fortitude is a fortress of the mind.
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Check yourself: Fortitude in context
Through two years of grueling treatment, the patient showed remarkable ______, continuing her graduate research from a hospital bed and rarely voicing complaint.
Answer: fortitude. Enduring hardship bravely without complaint is fortitude. Flippancy (joking lightness), dissonance (clash) and abatement (reduction) don't describe her endurance.
The settlers' journals reveal not heroic bravado but quiet ______: day after day they rebuilt fences, buried livestock, and replanted fields the floods had ruined.
Answer: fortitude. Patiently enduring repeated disasters is fortitude. Comity (courtesy between groups), pretense (false show) and flippancy (glibness) don't match quiet perseverance.