Halo

How to spell halo

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce halo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does halo mean?

1. nounA circle of light shown around the head of a holy figure in religious art.
2. nounA bright ring seen around the sun or moon, caused by light passing through ice crystals.

Halo in a sentence

• The medieval painting shows a golden halo behind each saint.

• A faint halo formed around the moon on the cold night.

• The restorer carefully cleaned the gilded halo above the angel.

• Ice crystals high in the air produced a shimmering halo around the sun.

Where does halo come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek halos, which named the bright disc seen around the sun or moon. Curiously, the very same Greek word originally meant a round threshing floor, the circular patch of ground where oxen trod out grain by walking in a ring; the shared idea is the circular shape. Latin borrowed it as halos, and English took it up in the late 1500s, at first for the luminous ring observed in the sky during certain weather. From there it broadened to the circle of light that painters set behind the heads of saints and holy figures. Because the word keeps its plain Greek vowels, the spelling is mercifully regular: just two open syllables, ha and lo.

How the word is built

• halo (from Greek halos: disc of the sun or moon, ring of light), used as a single unanalysed root in English