This word comes straight from Latin. In the Roman empire, a terminus was a boundary stone, and all boundary stones had a minor god associated with them, whose name was Terminus. Terminus was a kind of keeper of the peace, since wherever there was a terminus there could be no arguments about where your property ended and your neighbor's property began. So Terminus even had his own festival, the Terminalia, when images of the god were draped with flower garlands. Today the word shows up in all kinds of places, including in the name of numerous hotels worldwide built near a city's railway terminus.
Examples of terminus in a Sentence
Stockholm is the terminus for the southbound train.
Geologists took samples from the terminus of the glacier.
the terminus of the DNA strand
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Cherokee, North Carolina, is located at the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the southern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway.—Cu Fleshman, Travel + Leisure, 4 Oct. 2025 The trail will go through the park and then eventually connect to Pine Point Park, the current terminus of the trail.—Mary Divine, Twin Cities, 20 Sep. 2025 The lake helped stabilize the glacier terminus, retreat will accelerate after separation leading to further expansion of this rapidly growing lake.—Jasmine Laws, MSNBC Newsweek, 19 Sep. 2025 Ten years later, her name was put on display on North Richards Street from East Capitol Drive to its northern terminus, which includes Richards Street Armory, the home of her company.—Sophia Tiedge, jsonline.com, 11 Sep. 2025 See All Example Sentences for terminus
Word History
Etymology
Latin, boundary marker, limit — more at term entry 1
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