the.com/tenure

means A permanent job status, especially for professors, granted after a probationary period, that protects the holder from being dismissed without serious just cause.

from From Anglo-French 'tenure,' meaning 'a holding,' built on the Latin verb 'tenere,' 'to hold.' Originally it had nothing to do with professors — it described how land or office was legally held, as in feudal terms of tenure. The academic sense, meaning a permanently held faculty position, grew out of that older idea: you don't just have the job, you 'hold' it, the way a medieval lord held land.