long
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /lɒŋ/
ipa: /lɔːŋ/
note: Black Country
enpr: lo͝oŋg
ipa: /lʊŋɡ/
note: Black Country
ipa: /læŋ/
enpr: lông
ipa: /lɔŋ/
enpr: läng
ipa: /lɑŋ/
rhymes: -ɒŋ
Forms: form: longs
form: lang
Etymology: From Middle English long, lang, from Old English long, lang (“long, tall, lasting”), from Proto-West Germanic *lang, from Proto-Germanic *langaz (“long”), from Proto-Indo-European *dlongʰos (“long”).
Cognate with Scots lang (“long”), North Frisian lung, lüng (“long”), Saterland Frisian loang (“long”), West Frisian lang (“long”), Cimbrian lång (“long”), Dutch, German and Low German lang, Luxembourgish laang (“long”), Mòcheno lònk (“long”), Vilamovian łaong (“long”), Yiddish לאַנג (lang, “long”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk lang (“long”), Faroese and Icelandic langur (“long”), Swedish lång (“long”), Portuguese longo (“long”), Spanish luengo (“long”), French long, Italian lungo, Latin longus (“long”), Russian дли́нный (dlínnyj), до́лго (dólgo), Sanskrit दीर्घ (dīrgha, “long”).
The word shows the regular historical change of a to o before certain consonant clusters such as ng (compare with other examples in Middle and Modern English such as bond, song, throng, and wrong). The o-form may have also been reinforced by Old French long, from Latin longus, from the same Indo-European word. Doublet of lungo and lunge.
Senses: examples: text: In French most vowels are half-long, and are only occasionally lengthened or shortened into full longs and shorts.
ref: 1877, Henry Sweet, A Handbook of Phonetics, volume 2, page 60:
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
glosses: A long vowel.
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
phonology
prosody
sciences
glosses: A long syllable.
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
glosses: A note formerly used in music, one half the length of a large, twice that of a breve.
examples: text: A long is typically 64 bits in a 32-bit environment.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
programming
sciences
glosses: A long integer variable, twice the size of an int, two or four times the size of a short, and half of a long long.
examples: text: Every uptick made the longs cheer.
topics: business
finance
synonyms: bull
glosses: An entity with a long position in an asset; for example, a trader or investor possessing an amount of a company's shares.
examples: text: Likewise, if borrowers prefer to sell short-maturity issues at the time lenders prefer to invest in longs, as is the case when interest rates are expected to fall, longer maturity issues will tend to yield less than shorter maturity issues.
ref: 1977, Jerome B. Cohen, Edward D. Zinbarg, Arthur Zeikel, Guide to Intelligent Investing, →OCLC, page 203:
text: "U.S. Treasury Market Structure", https://www.mfaalts.org/issue/u-s-treasury-market-structure/
Hedge funds are constrained in how much leverage they can utilize, in part because the futures contracts they are shorting against their Treasury longs have significant initial margin requirements.
topics: business
finance
glosses: A long-maturity security, such as a ten- or twenty-year bond.
examples: text: “[…] Did I not forbid all these nicknames and all this Oxfordish, by proclamation, last Long.”
“Last Long?”
“Hem! last protracted vacation.”
ref: 1863, Charles Reade, Hard Cash:
glosses: Clipping of long vacation (“summer vacation”).