Cameo

How to spell cameo

5 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce cameo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cameo mean?

1. nounA short appearance by a well-known person in a film, show, or production.
2. nounA piece of jewellery featuring a raised carved figure or portrait, often on shell or stone.

Cameo in a sentence

• The famous director made a brief cameo in his own thriller.

• She wore an antique cameo pinned to the collar of her coat.

• Fans were delighted by the singer's surprise cameo near the end of the episode.

• The auction listed a pink shell cameo depicting a woman in profile.

Where does cameo come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word came into English in the late 1300s from the Old French camahieu and the medieval Latin cammaeus, both naming a gemstone or shell carved so that a raised design stands out against a darker background. The ultimate source is uncertain, and the Italian cammeo is the form that fixed the modern spelling; some scholars have suggested a link to an Arabic or Persian word for a carved charm, but the trail is genuinely unclear. For centuries the word referred only to the jewellery: a delicate portrait or figure cut in relief on agate, onyx, or shell. The modern theatrical sense, a small but striking appearance by a notable performer, grew out of that idea of a brief, finely worked miniature that catches the eye. The spelling trap is the quiet vowel run in the middle: the -ameo sequence is easy to scramble, and the final -eo looks more exotic than it sounds.

How the word is built

• cameo (single root, from Italian cammeo: a carved raised gem; no productive prefix or suffix)