Moon

How to spell moon

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce moon

What does moon mean?

1. nounThe natural satellite that orbits the Earth and is visible in the night sky.
2. verbTo pass time idly or to gaze and behave dreamily, as if lost in thought.

Moon in a sentence

• noun

  A full moon lit the path back to the cottage.

• verb

  He tends to moon around the house instead of finishing his chores.

• noun

  The astronauts spent three days travelling to the moon.

• verb

  She would moon over old photographs for hours after dinner.

Where does moon come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Moon descends directly from the Old English mona, the ordinary word for the celestial body that lights the night sky, and it has been part of English since its earliest written records. The Old English form goes back to a Germanic ancestor shared with Dutch maan and German Mond, and ultimately to an Indo-European root that also gave Latin its mensis and Greek its men, both meaning 'month'. That connection is no accident: ancient peoples measured the passing months by the moon's repeating cycle, so the words for moon and month grew from the same idea of measured time. The spelling settled with a double o during the Middle English period as scribes used 'oo' to mark the long vowel sound. The verb meaning 'to wander about idly' or 'to gaze dreamily' arose later, picturing someone as distracted as a person staring up at the moon.

How the word is built

• moon (from Old English mona, the moon); a single, unsuffixed native root with no prefix or suffix