Lynx

How to spell lynx

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce lynx

What does lynx mean?

1. nounA wild cat with a short tail, tufted ears, and keen eyesight, native to northern forests.

Lynx in a sentence

• The ranger photographed a lynx stalking through the snowy pine forest.

• A Canadian lynx has thick fur and large padded paws for walking on snow.

Where does lynx come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes almost unchanged from the Greek lunx, the name of the wild cat, which passed into Latin as lynx and then into English in the late 1300s. Many scholars connect the Greek name to the root leuk-, meaning 'bright' or 'shining', a nod to the animal's gleaming, reflective eyes and its reputation for unusually sharp sight. That same bright-shining root sits behind familiar words such as 'lucid' and 'lucifer', and it is why older writers spoke of someone having 'lynx-eyed' vision. The unusual cluster of letters at the end, with the silent-looking y standing in for the Greek upsilon and the n-x giving a 'ngks' sound, is a direct inheritance from the Greek spelling rather than anything native to English. That foreign shape is exactly why the word is so easily replaced by its everyday homophone 'links', so it helps to remember the y and the x both came straight from Greek.

How the word is built

• lynx (a single Greek root naming the wild cat; no prefix or suffix)

Words that sound like lynx

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• links: More than one connection, joining piece, or clickable web reference.