Pneumatic

How to spell pneumatic

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce pneumatic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pneumatic mean?

1. adjectiveOperated by, filled with, or relating to compressed air or gas.

Pneumatic in a sentence

• The workers used a pneumatic drill to break up the old pavement.

• Each bus door opens with a quiet pneumatic hiss.

Where does pneumatic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek pneuma, which literally meant 'breath' or 'wind', and by extension 'spirit', drawn from the verb pnein, 'to breathe'. From pneuma the Greeks formed pneumatikos, meaning 'of wind or air', and Latin borrowed it as pneumaticus. English picked the word up in the seventeenth century to describe anything relating to air or gases, and it later settled into its modern engineering sense of devices powered or cushioned by compressed air, such as pneumatic tyres and pneumatic drills. The same pneuma root surfaces in 'pneumonia', the lung disease, which is a useful memory hook: both keep the silent opening 'p' followed by 'neu'. That silent 'p' is the heart of the spelling trap, a fossil of the original Greek 'pn' cluster that English speakers no longer pronounce but still faithfully write.

How the word is built

• pneumat- (from Greek pneuma: breath, air)
• -ic (adjective-forming suffix)