Oasis

How to spell oasis

5 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce oasis

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does oasis mean?

1. nounA fertile area in a desert where water rises to the surface and plants can grow.
2. nounA pleasant or peaceful place that contrasts with its harsh or unpleasant surroundings.

Oasis in a sentence

• The caravan stopped to refill its water barrels at a remote desert oasis.

• The quiet reading room was an oasis in the middle of the busy office.

• Palm trees marked the edge of the oasis from miles away.

• Their shaded garden became an oasis of cool air during the heatwave.

Where does oasis come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word came into English in the late 1500s from the Late Latin oasis, which Latin had taken straight from the Greek oasis. The Greeks did not coin the word themselves; they borrowed it from an Egyptian source, related to the Coptic word ouahe, meaning a fertile, dwelling place or inhabited spot in the desert. Its earliest documented use described the green, watered hollows of the Libyan and Egyptian deserts, and by the 1800s English speakers were using it figuratively for any refreshing refuge in the middle of something bleak. The spelling trap is that the unusual vowel run o-a-s catches writers out: it is pronounced oh-AY-sis, so the silent-looking 'a' carries the stressed sound, and the plural famously shifts to 'oases'.

How the word is built

• oasis (single root; no productive prefix or suffix in English)