Horoscope

How to spell horoscope

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce horoscope

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does horoscope mean?

1. nounA forecast of a person's future based on the position of the stars and planets, typically tied to their birth sign.

Horoscope in a sentence

• She read her horoscope in the newspaper over breakfast.

• The magazine prints a weekly horoscope for every star sign.

Where does horoscope come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek horoskopos, which literally meant 'observer of the hour'. It joined hora, meaning 'hour', 'season', or 'time', with skopos, 'a watcher' or 'one who looks', from the verb skopein, 'to look at' or 'examine'. In ancient astrology this named the moment of someone's birth and the configuration of the sky observed at that hour, which was thought to shape a life. The term passed through Latin as horoscopus and into Old French before entering English in the 1500s. The same skopein root powers a whole family of modern words, including telescope, microscope, and periscope, all of which are tools or methods for looking; remembering that the ending is the looking part, '-scope', helps fix the spelling and keeps the second 'o' from drifting.

How the word is built

• horo- (from Greek hora: hour, season, time)
• -scope (from skopos: watcher, observer)