Meteorological

How to spell meteorological

14 letters · 7 syllables

How to pronounce meteorological

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does meteorological mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to the atmosphere, weather, or the scientific study and forecasting of it.

Meteorological in a sentence

• The airport closed after a sudden meteorological warning about high winds.

• Farmers rely on accurate meteorological data to plan the harvest.

Where does meteorological come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the ancient Greek meteoros, an adjective meaning 'high up' or 'raised off the ground', built from meta 'beyond, among' and a root related to aeirein 'to lift or raise'. The Greeks used ta meteora to describe phenomena occurring high in the air, and Aristotle's treatise Meteorologica gathered together the study of rain, wind, clouds, and other things that happen overhead. From that title came the Latin meteorologia and eventually the English noun meteorology, the systematic study of the atmosphere and its weather. The adjective meteorological was formed in English by the 1600s by adding the familiar -ical ending, and it long predated the modern shooting-star sense of 'meteor'. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle: the 'eo' of meteoro- and the row of weak vowels in 'or-o-log' are easy to slur or drop, even though the word literally means 'pertaining to things studied high in the sky'.

How the word is built

• meteoro- (from Greek meteoron: a thing high in the sky)
• -log- (logos: study, account)
• -ical (adjective suffix)