Cavern

How to spell cavern

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cavern

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cavern mean?

1. nounA large underground chamber or cave, often part of a system formed in rock.

Cavern in a sentence

• The guided tour led us deep into the limestone cavern.

• Water dripped steadily from the roof of the dark cavern.

Where does cavern come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin caverna, meaning a hollow place or a cave, which was built on the adjective cavus, literally 'hollow' or 'empty inside'. English took it in during the 1300s by way of Old French caverne, where it carried the same sense of a large underground hollow. The same cavus root sits behind a family of familiar English words, including 'cave', 'cavity', and even 'concave', all of which share the idea of an empty, scooped-out space. The spelling preserves the Latin -ern ending rather than collapsing into the shorter 'cave', which is why people sometimes hesitate over whether it ends in -ern or -urn; remembering the relatives 'cavity' and 'concave' keeps the first vowel an 'a'.

How the word is built

• cavern (from Latin caverna: hollow place), based on cavus (hollow)