Canopy

How to spell canopy

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce canopy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does canopy mean?

1. nounA roof-like covering spread overhead, such as a fabric awning, an ornamental cloth, or the leafy upper layer of a forest.

Canopy in a sentence

• The hikers walked beneath a dense canopy of rainforest leaves.

• A striped canopy shaded the cafe tables from the afternoon sun.

Where does canopy come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the ancient Greek konopeion, which named a couch or bed fitted with a fine net to keep out gnats and mosquitoes. That sense came from konops, the Greek word for 'gnat' or 'mosquito', so the original idea was protection from biting insects rather than shade or grandeur. The term passed into Latin as conopeum and then into Medieval Latin as canopeum, drifting to mean the draped covering itself rather than the netting. English borrowed it through Old French in the late 1300s, by which time it described an ornamental cloth hung over a throne, altar, or bed. The modern senses, from the leafy roof of a forest to the awning over a doorway, all keep that core notion of something spread overhead, and the single 'n' and single 'p' (no doubling) are the spelling points worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• canop- (from Greek konops: gnat/mosquito)
• -y (noun suffix)