Jurassic

How to spell jurassic

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce jurassic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does jurassic mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the geological period between roughly 200 and 145 million years ago, known for large dinosaurs.

Jurassic in a sentence

• The museum dedicated a whole gallery to jurassic fossils.

• The cliff exposes a thick layer of jurassic limestone.

Where does jurassic come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the Jura Mountains, the long range of limestone hills straddling the border between France and Switzerland, where rocks laid down in this period were first carefully studied. The mountain name itself is thought to derive from a Celtic root meaning 'forest' or 'wooded height', later passing through Latin as Juria. In the early nineteenth century geologists adopted the French adjective Jurassique to label the strata typical of those mountains, and English took it over as 'jurassic' by the 1830s. The period it names sits in the middle of the Mesozoic era, roughly 200 to 145 million years ago, and is famous as an age of large dinosaurs. Because the spelling preserves the proper place name, it keeps a single 'r' and a double 's', which is the main trap for writers who expect the consonants to behave the other way around.

How the word is built

• Jurass- (from the Jura Mountains)
• -ic (adjectival suffix: relating to)