Antarctic

How to spell antarctic

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce antarctic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does antarctic mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the South Pole or the cold southern polar region surrounding it.

Antarctic in a sentence

• The research station endures months of antarctic darkness each winter.

• Penguins are well adapted to the harsh antarctic climate.

Where does antarctic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word travels back to the Greek arktos, which literally meant 'bear', and which the Greeks used as a name for the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear that wheels around the northern sky. From that came arktikos, meaning 'of the north' or 'near the Bear', the source of our word 'arctic'. Prefixing it with anti, meaning 'opposite' or 'over against', gave antarktikos, 'opposite the north', the region at the far southern end of the world. English took the word through Old French and Latin antarcticus in the late medieval period, and the spelling settled with two c sounds clearly preserved. The trap for modern writers is exactly that first c in 'arc', which is easy to drop in speech and therefore easy to omit on the page; remembering the hidden Bear, 'arktos' to 'arctic', helps keep the c firmly in place.

How the word is built

• ant- (from Greek anti, opposite)
• arctic (from arktos, bear; the northern bear constellation)
• -ic (adjective suffix)