Astral

How to spell astral

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce astral

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does astral mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or resembling the stars or the night sky.
2. adjectiveIn spiritualist and occult belief, relating to a non-physical plane or body said to exist beyond the material world.

Astral in a sentence

• The museum exhibit traced early astral navigation across the open ocean.

• The novel's hero claimed to leave his body and wander the astral plane while he slept.

• Photographers gathered on the hillside to capture the faint astral glow above the valley.

• The workshop promised to teach techniques for astral projection and meditation.

Where does astral come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin astralis, meaning 'of the stars', which was formed from astrum, the Latin noun for a star or a heavenly body. Latin in turn borrowed astrum from the Greek astron, also meaning 'star', a root that fans out into a whole family of familiar English words including astronomy, asteroid, asterisk (literally a 'little star') and even disaster, which once described a calamity blamed on the ill position of the stars. Astral entered English in the early 1600s as a scholarly adjective for anything connected with the stars or the night sky. By the nineteenth century occult and theosophical writers had stretched it to describe a supposed spirit realm and a 'astral body' that could travel beyond the physical one. The spelling stays close to its Latin source, so remembering the star root astr- keeps the single central s and the unstressed -al ending in order.

How the word is built

• astr- (from Latin astrum: star)
• -al (adjective suffix: relating to)