Sapphire

How to spell sapphire

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce sapphire

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sapphire mean?

1. nounA precious gemstone, typically deep blue, that is a transparent form of the mineral corundum.
2. adjectiveOf a deep, brilliant blue resembling the gemstone.

Sapphire in a sentence

• noun

  The ring held a single sapphire surrounded by tiny diamonds.

• adjective

  The evening gown was a striking sapphire blue.

• noun

  The jeweller valued the sapphire far higher than the surrounding stones.

• adjective

  The lake turned a clear sapphire shade under the midday sun.

Where does sapphire come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the ancient Greek sappheiros, which named a precious blue stone, and it travelled into Latin as sapphirus before reaching English. The Greek term itself was probably borrowed from a Semitic source, compare the Hebrew sappir, and many scholars suspect an even older link to a Sanskrit word for a dark stone, so the trail of borrowing is long and a little uncertain. English picked it up in the 1200s through Old French safir, a spelling with a single f and no h, but the form later swung back toward its classical roots and absorbed the doubled p and the silent h of the Latin and Greek originals. That restored double p and the ph (which makes a simple f sound) are exactly the two traps that catch modern writers, since neither doubling nor the Greek ph is audible. Interestingly, the ancient stone called sappheiros may not have been the blue corundum we now mean; classical writers seem to have applied it to lapis lazuli as well.

How the word is built

• sapphir- (from Greek sappheiros, the blue gemstone)
• -e (English spelling ending)