Corona

How to spell corona

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce corona

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does corona mean?

1. nounThe luminous outer atmosphere of the Sun or another star, seen as a halo of light during a total eclipse.
2. nounA faint luminous discharge of electricity that forms around a conductor at high voltage.

Corona in a sentence

• During the total eclipse, the Sun's corona blazed as a silver ring around the dark disc.

• Engineers reduced the corona around the power line to cut energy loss and audible buzzing.

• The observatory captured images of the corona to study the temperature of the Sun's outer layers.

• The high-voltage terminal glowed with a faint blue corona in the dark laboratory.

Where does corona come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is simply the Latin corona, which meant a 'crown', 'wreath', or 'garland', the circle of honour placed on a victor's or ruler's head. The Latin term traces further back to the Greek korone, meaning a 'curved object' or 'something bent', a sense that also gave us 'crown' itself through Old French. English adopted corona directly in its Latin form for scientific and technical uses from the 1600s onward, keeping the original spelling intact rather than anglicising it. Astronomers borrowed it for the glowing ring of plasma visible around the Sun during a total eclipse, because it looks like a crown of light, and engineers later used it for the faint halo of electrical discharge around a high-voltage conductor. Because the word kept its tidy Latin shape, the spelling rarely confuses adults: it is one root, one ending, with no doubled letters or silent traps.

How the word is built

• coron- (from Latin corona: crown, garland)
• -a (Latin noun ending)