forms nouns: the act of (being), the state of (being); In medical terminology, endings like -ence/-ance (where -ce completes the form) derive from Latin and create nouns that describe the quality, state, or result of an action tied to the root verb.
Examples include continence (“ability to retain”) or impedance (“resistance to flow”), often seen in pharmacology, physiology, and diagnostics to denote measurable properties or conditions; they parallel -tion/-ation but emphasize ongoing states rather than discrete processes.