Cliff

How to spell cliff

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cliff

What does cliff mean?

1. nounA high, steep face of rock or earth, especially one at the edge of the sea or a high ground.

Cliff in a sentence

• The coastal path runs close to the edge of the cliff.

• Erosion has caused part of the cliff to collapse onto the beach.

Where does cliff come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Cliff comes straight from the Old English word clif, which meant a steep rock face or precipice and was already in use well before the Norman Conquest. It belongs to a wider family of Germanic words, including the Dutch klif and the Old Norse klif, all describing rocky slopes and headlands. Because the word is native rather than borrowed, its spelling stayed short and plain, and the doubled final letters simply mark the short vowel sound, the same pattern seen in 'stiff' and 'cuff'. Over the centuries it kept its literal sense of a high, sheer drop, and it also gave English the familiar surname and personal name Clifford, originally meaning a ford by a cliff. The modern figurative idea of being on the edge of disaster, such as a financial 'cliff', grew naturally out of that vivid image of a sudden steep fall.

How the word is built

• cliff (a single root from Old English clif: a steep rock face)