Bulb

How to spell bulb

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bulb

What does bulb mean?

1. nounA glass globe containing a filament or element that produces light when an electric current passes through it.
2. nounThe rounded underground storage organ of certain plants, from which the stem and roots grow.

Bulb in a sentence

• The hallway bulb flickered and then went dark.

• He planted each tulip bulb about ten centimetres deep.

• She kept a spare bulb in the kitchen drawer.

• An onion is technically a swollen bulb made of layered leaves.

Where does bulb come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin bulbus, which meant an onion or any rounded, swollen root growing underground. The Romans in turn borrowed it from the Greek bolbos, the name for an edible bulbous plant much like an onion. English took the word up in the 1500s to describe the underground storage organs of plants such as tulips, onions, and daffodils, all of which share that distinctive rounded shape. As technology advanced, the same idea of a small rounded swelling was applied to other objects, giving us the bulb of a thermometer in the 1600s and the glass bulb of an electric lamp in the 1800s. The spelling stays close to its Latin parent, and the only mild trap is the cluster of consonants at the end, where the second 'b' is fully pronounced rather than silent.

How the word is built

• bulb (whole root, from Latin bulbus 'onion, bulbous root'); no prefix or suffix, a single-morpheme word