Ballerina
nounA female ballet dancer, especially a principal performer in a company.
How to spell ballerina
9 letters · 4 syllables
How to pronounce ballerina
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does ballerina mean?
- nounA female ballet dancer, especially a principal performer in a company.
Ballerina in a sentence
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The lead ballerina rehearsed her solo for three hours before the premiere.
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Every young ballerina in the company trained from early childhood.
Where does ballerina come from?
Language of origin: Italian
The word came into English directly from Italian in the early 1700s, borrowed from the world of opera and theatrical dance. In Italian, ballerina is the feminine form of ballerino, meaning a dancer, and it traces back to the verb ballare, which means 'to dance'. That verb itself derives from the Late Latin ballare, also 'to dance', which is linked to the Greek ballizein, meaning 'to jump about' or 'to dance'. The same Italian dance vocabulary gave English the closely related word 'ballet', so a ballerina is literally a woman who performs ballet. The double 'l' in the spelling preserves the original Italian root ball-, and remembering the connection to 'ballet' helps fix that doubled consonant in mind.
How the word is built
- ball- (from ballare: to dance)
- -erina (Italian feminine suffix denoting a female performer)
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