Ebony

How to spell ebony

5 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ebony

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ebony mean?

1. nounA hard, dense, black wood from certain tropical trees, used for fine furniture and instruments.
2. adjectiveDeep, glossy black in colour.

Ebony in a sentence

• noun

  The antique chess set was carved from polished ebony.

• adjective

  Her ebony hair gleamed under the studio lights.

• noun

  The piano keys were once made from ebony and ivory.

• adjective

  The horse had a sleek ebony coat without a single white mark.

Where does ebony come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Ebony traces back through Latin ebenus and Greek ebenos to an ancient Egyptian word, hbny, which named the dark, heavy heartwood of certain tropical trees. The Greeks and Romans prized this timber for its hardness and its deep black colour, and the name travelled with the wood as it was traded around the Mediterranean. English picked it up in the late Middle Ages, with the spelling reshaped to ebony by the 1400s, the added 'y' bringing it into line with other English nouns. From the literal wood the word stretched naturally into an adjective for anything intensely black, since the timber was the benchmark for true black. A useful spelling cue is that it keeps a single 'b' and ends in '-ony', not '-any'.

How the word is built

• ebon- (from Latin ebenus: ebony wood)
• -y (forming a noun and adjective)