Sauna

How to spell sauna

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sauna

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sauna mean?

1. nounA small heated room or wooden cabin where people sit to sweat in dry or steam heat, used for relaxation and cleansing.

Sauna in a sentence

• The hotel gym had a small sauna next to the changing rooms.

• After the swim she sat in the sauna to warm up.

Where does sauna come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word comes directly from Finnish, where 'sauna' is the ancient name for the traditional Finnish steam bath and the small wooden building that houses it. The Finnish term is very old and its deeper origin is uncertain, though it is often linked to early Finno-Ugric words for a pit or earthen shelter, reflecting the fact that the earliest saunas were dug into hillsides or banks. English borrowed the word in the early twentieth century, around the 1880s in occasional use and far more widely after the Second World War, as Finnish bathing culture spread internationally. It is one of very few Finnish words to enter everyday English, and the unusual 'au' vowel pairing followed by 'na' is exactly what trips writers up, since it does not follow a familiar English spelling pattern. Keeping the foreign 'au' in mind, rather than an English-looking 'saw' or 'sow', is the key to spelling it correctly.

How the word is built

• sauna (a complete Finnish loanword, not decomposable into English prefix, root, and suffix; it simply means the steam bath itself)