Iron

How to spell iron

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce iron

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does iron mean?

1. nounA strong, common grey metallic element used to make steel and many tools.
2. nounA heated handheld tool used to press creases out of clothes.
3. verbTo smooth fabric by pressing it with a heated tool.

Iron in a sentence

• noun

  The old bridge was built from cast iron over a century ago.

• noun

  She left the iron on the board and burned a mark into the shirt.

• verb

  He likes to iron his work shirts the night before a meeting.

• noun

  Doctors told her to eat more spinach to raise the iron in her blood.

• noun

  The hotel room had a small iron and a folding board in the closet.

• verb

  Please iron the tablecloth before the guests arrive.

Where does iron come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Iron comes from the Old English iren, also spelled isen or isern, the everyday name for the grey metal worked by early smiths. It traces back to Proto-Germanic isarnan, a word shared with Dutch ijzer and German Eisen, and many scholars believe the Germanic peoples actually borrowed it from a Celtic source meaning something like 'holy metal' or 'strong metal', a sign of how prized the material was. Over the centuries the spelling settled as i-r-o-n even though the pronunciation drifted to 'eye-ern', with the r and o effectively swapping their spoken order, which is precisely the trap that makes the word look misspelled when you sound it out. The same root sense of hardness gave rise to figurative uses such as an 'iron will' and 'iron grip'. From the metal came the names of household tools heated to press cloth and, later, the verb meaning to smooth fabric with one.

How the word is built

• iron (a single Germanic root from Old English iren/isern; no prefix or suffix)