Lion

How to spell lion

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lion

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lion mean?

1. nounA large wild cat native to Africa and parts of Asia, the male of which has a thick mane.

Lion in a sentence

• The lion rested in the shade after the long afternoon hunt.

• Visitors watched the lion pace behind the glass at the wildlife park.

Where does lion come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word travels back to the Greek leon and the Latin leo (stem leonem), both names for the big cat. Latin passed it into Old French as lion, and that is the form English adopted in the early 1200s, gradually replacing the older Old English word leo. The literal meaning has stayed remarkably stable across all those centuries: it has always meant the large African and Asian cat famed for its mane and its roar. The same root survives in personal names such as Leo and Leonard (the latter blending it with a Germanic word for 'brave'), as well as in the dandelion, whose French source dent de lion means 'tooth of the lion' after its jagged leaves. The spelling trap is the quiet -ion ending, which looks as though it should sound like the -tion of words such as 'nation' but here is simply pronounced as two plain syllables.

How the word is built

• lion (from Latin leo, leonem: lion); a simple borrowed noun with no separable affixes