Giraffe

How to spell giraffe

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce giraffe

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does giraffe mean?

1. nounA tall African mammal with an extremely long neck and legs and a patterned coat.

Giraffe in a sentence

• The giraffe stretched its long neck to reach the highest leaves.

• At the safari park, a young giraffe followed close behind its mother.

Where does giraffe come from?

Language of origin: Arabic

The word giraffe traces back to the Arabic zarafah, the name North African and Middle Eastern peoples used for the long-necked animal. It travelled into European languages through Italian, where it became giraffa, and reached English in the late 1500s, partly shaped by the French girafe. Earlier English speakers had actually called the creature a 'camelopard', a fanciful name that imagined it as a cross between a camel and a leopard. The smoother Arabic-derived form gradually won out, and by the nineteenth century giraffe was the settled term. The spelling trap lies in the soft 'g' followed by the doubled 'f' and final silent 'e', a pattern that came in with the Italian and French forms rather than from English habits.

How the word is built

• giraffe (single root, from Arabic zarafah via Italian giraffa)