Gnome

How to spell gnome

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce gnome

What does gnome mean?

1. nounA small, often bearded mythical creature that lives underground, or a statue of one used to decorate a garden.

Gnome in a sentence

• A ceramic gnome stood beside the rose bed all summer.

• The children's book described a gnome guarding a hoard of buried treasure.

Where does gnome come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The everyday meaning of gnome comes through French from the Latin gnomus, a word that the Renaissance physician and alchemist Paracelsus apparently coined in the 1500s to name the small earth-dwelling spirits of his elemental scheme. It is widely thought that he based it on the Greek genomos, meaning 'earth-dweller', combining ge 'earth' with a root meaning 'to dwell'. From these underground sprites the word drifted into folklore and fairy tale, and by the nineteenth century it described the squat bearded figures that now decorate suburban gardens. A quite separate gnome, meaning a short pithy maxim, comes directly from the Greek gnome 'judgement, opinion, or wise saying', a relative of words for knowing and thinking. Both senses share the awkward silent g at the front, a spelling kept from the Greek-derived form even though English never pronounced it, which is exactly what trips writers up.

How the word is built

• gn- (silent g, from Greek gnome/Latin gnomus)
• -ome (root); single root word, no separable affixes