Calm

How to spell calm

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce calm

What does calm mean?

1. adjectiveFree from agitation, excitement, or strong emotion; peaceful and untroubled.
2. verbTo make someone or something quieter, less agitated, or less anxious.
3. nounA state of stillness, tranquillity, or freedom from disturbance.

Calm in a sentence

• adjective

  She stayed calm throughout the long delay at the airport.

• verb

  A warm drink can help calm your nerves before the interview.

• noun

  An unusual calm settled over the office after the deadline passed.

• adjective

  The sea was completely calm on the morning of the crossing.

• verb

  The manager tried to calm the angry customers waiting in the queue.

• noun

  She valued the calm of the early morning before the children woke.

Where does calm come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek kauma, which literally meant 'the heat of the day', the burning midday sun under which everything fell still. This passed into Late Latin as cauma and then into Old Italian and Old French as calme, where the sense shifted from the heat itself to the windless stillness that settles over the sea and the land during the hottest, drowsiest part of the day, the hours when sailors could not work because no breeze stirred the sails. English borrowed the word in the late 1300s, first describing weather and water that were free of wind and waves, and only afterwards extending it to people who are untroubled and unhurried in their feelings. The silent 'l', which makes the spelling such a quiet trap, was inserted by scholars who wanted the word to look more like its Latin relatives, even though it was never pronounced. That same buried 'l' shows up in its cousins 'palm' and 'psalm', a handy memory hook for all three.

How the word is built

• calm (single root, from Old French calme: stillness, absence of wind), no prefix or suffix in the base form