Lantern

How to spell lantern

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lantern

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lantern mean?

1. nounA portable case or container with transparent sides that holds and protects a light.

Lantern in a sentence

• The campers hung a lantern from the tent pole to read by.

• During the power cut she lit an old oil lantern in the kitchen.

Where does lantern come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek lamptēr, meaning 'torch' or 'light', which referred to a stand or vessel holding a flame. The Romans adopted it as lanterna (also spelled laterna), a portable case enclosing a light so that wind would not snuff it out. English borrowed the word through Old French lanterne in the 1200s, when such cases were typically made with translucent panes of horn rather than glass. For a time the spelling 'lanthorn' was popular, a folk reshaping that wrongly linked the word to the horn panes, though that version eventually faded. The modern -ern ending is the spelling trap: it sounds like the unstressed 'urn', so writers are tempted to write 'lanturn', but the older Latin and Greek roots fix it firmly as -ern.

How the word is built

• lant- (from Greek lamptēr: torch, light)
• -ern (noun ending)