Heavenly

How to spell heavenly

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce heavenly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does heavenly mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to heaven or the sky, especially in a religious or astronomical sense.
2. adjectiveExtremely pleasant, beautiful, or enjoyable.

Heavenly in a sentence

• The astronomer charted the heavenly bodies visible that night.

• The bakery filled the street with a heavenly smell of warm bread.

• Medieval paintings often depicted a heavenly host surrounding the throne.

• After the long flight, the hotel bed felt absolutely heavenly.

Where does heavenly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from Old English heofonlic, a compound of heofon, meaning the sky or the dwelling place of God, and the suffix -lic, which gives the sense 'having the qualities of'. The root heofon belongs to the native Germanic stock of English and has cousins across the family, such as the German Himmel for sky and heaven. From its earliest use it carried two strands of meaning: the literal 'belonging to the sky or the firmament' and the religious 'belonging to the abode of the divine'. By the Middle Ages the figurative sense had blossomed, so that anything supremely pleasant or blissful could be called heavenly. The spelling keeps the silent middle vowel of heaven intact, simply adding -ly, which is why writers must remember the 'eave' cluster rather than collapsing it.

How the word is built

• heaven (from Old English heofon: the sky, the abode of God)
• -ly (adjective suffix meaning 'having the quality of')