Desinence

Word of the Day for Saturday, January 14, 2012

desinence \DES-uh-nuhns\, noun:

1. A termination or ending, as the final line of a verse.
2. Grammar. A termination, ending, or suffix of a word.

The extreme facility with which the language lends itself to rhyming desinence has a most injurious effect upon versification. There are not verses only, but whole poems, in which each line terminates with the same desinence.
-- Wentworth Webster, Basque Legends

But it will end, a desinence will come, or the breath fail better still, I'll be silence, I'll know I'm silence, no, in the silence you can't know, I'll never know anything.

-- Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing," The Complete Short Prose

Like descent, desinence is related to the Latin word dēsinere which meant "to put down or leave."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/