Rainbow

How to spell rainbow

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rainbow

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rainbow mean?

1. nounAn arc of spectral colours that appears in the sky when sunlight is refracted through rain or mist.

Rainbow in a sentence

• A bright rainbow arched over the wet fields after the storm.

• The children painted a rainbow across the top of the poster.

Where does rainbow come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a thoroughly native English word, formed in Old English as 'regnboga', a simple compound of 'regn' meaning rain and 'boga' meaning a bow or anything bent into an arch. The same 'boga' root sits inside the weapon 'bow' and the verb 'to bow', all carrying the underlying sense of a curve. Speakers across the centuries simply described the coloured arc by joining the rain that produces it to the bent shape it forms in the sky. Both halves survived the long erosion of Old English into modern spelling almost unchanged, which is why the word looks so transparent today. The spelling holds no trap because both parts are common everyday words spelled exactly as they sound.

How the word is built

• rain (falling water)
• bow (curved arc)