Climatic

How to spell climatic

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce climatic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does climatic mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the typical weather conditions of a region or to the climate as a whole.

Climatic in a sentence

• Farmers in the valley have adapted to the harsh climatic conditions.

• The report links rising sea levels to long term climatic change.

Where does climatic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek klima, which literally meant a slope or inclination and came to describe a zone or region of the earth, since the ancients linked the tilt of the sky and the angle of the sun to the latitude of a place. Latin took it up as clima, and it passed into English through scientific Latin as climate. The adjective climatic was formed by adding the familiar -ic ending meaning 'relating to', giving the sense 'relating to the weather conditions of a region'. The first part of the word still carries that old idea of a band or belt of the earth, which is why climate and latitude are connected in origin. A common spelling trap is the near-twin climactic, which comes from a completely different Greek word, klimax meaning 'ladder' and later 'climax', so the missing letter c in climatic is the whole difference.

How the word is built

• climat- (from Greek klima: region, zone, slope of the earth)
• -ic (adjective suffix: relating to)