Aurora

How to spell aurora

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce aurora

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aurora mean?

1. nounA natural display of coloured light in the sky near the magnetic poles, caused by charged particles striking the atmosphere.

Aurora in a sentence

• The tour group travelled to northern Norway hoping to photograph the aurora.

• A strong solar storm made the aurora visible much further south than usual.

Where does aurora come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from Latin aurora, which simply meant 'dawn' or 'the first light of morning', and was also the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn. The Latin form traces back to an older root meaning 'to shine' or 'to glow', the same ancient root that gave us 'east' (the direction of sunrise) and even 'Easter'. The Greeks personified the same idea as the goddess Eos, a close cousin of the Roman Aurora. English adopted the word directly from Latin in the late 1300s, keeping both the spelling and the original sense of daybreak. Its modern, most familiar use, the glowing lights seen near the poles, was coined by scientists who named the phenomenon 'aurora borealis' (northern dawn), borrowing the goddess's name because the shimmering light resembled a dawn in the night sky. The unusual 'au' opening and the single inner 'r' both reflect the untouched Latin spelling.

How the word is built

• aurora (Latin: dawn, daybreak), used unchanged as an English noun