Altar

How to spell altar

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce altar

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does altar mean?

1. nounA raised table or structure used as the focus of religious worship or ceremony.

Altar in a sentence

• The priest lit two candles on the altar before the service.

• The bride and groom knelt at the altar during the ceremony.

Where does altar come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin altare, meaning a structure on which sacrifices or offerings were made to a god. The Latin form is connected to altus, meaning 'high' or 'raised', and to adolere, meaning 'to burn as an offering', so the underlying idea is a raised place where something is burnt or presented. Old English borrowed the word early as altar through the Church, and the spelling settled with the -ar ending that the Latin altare suggested. The everyday confusion is with its homophone 'alter', the verb meaning 'to change', which descends from an entirely separate Latin word, alter, meaning 'other'. Remembering that an altar is a fixed, raised church table, while to alter is to make something other than it was, helps keep the two spellings apart.

How the word is built

• altar (from Latin altare: a high place of sacrifice, related to altus 'high')

Words that sound like altar

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• alter: To change something or make it different in some way.