Aries

How to spell aries

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce aries

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aries mean?

1. nounThe first sign of the zodiac, symbolised by the ram, covering roughly 21 March to 19 April.
2. nounA small northern constellation lying between Pisces and Taurus, depicting a ram.

Aries in a sentence

• People born in late March often fall under aries.

• On a clear autumn night you can trace aries low in the eastern sky.

• The magazine printed a cheerful horoscope for aries this week.

• The astronomy guide showed how to find aries near a bright reddish star.

Where does aries come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is simply the Latin aries, which literally meant 'ram', the male sheep. Roman and earlier Greek astronomers mapped a group of stars into the shape of a ram and named the constellation accordingly, and that name passed straight into the zodiac as the first of its twelve signs. The word came into English in the medieval period through the language of astronomy and astrology, where Latin terms were used wholesale, which is why it keeps its original Latin spelling rather than an anglicised one. The same root survives in the rare adjective 'arietate' and in the military 'battering ram', a translation of the Latin aries that besiegers used to batter down gates. The spelling trap is the ending: it is -ies, not -eys or -is, preserving the Latin nominative form exactly.

How the word is built

• aries (Latin: ram), used unchanged as a proper noun