Silver

How to spell silver

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce silver

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does silver mean?

1. nounA shiny greyish-white precious metal used for coins, jewellery, and tableware.
2. adjectiveHaving the shiny greyish-white colour of the metal.
3. verbTo coat or cover something with a thin layer of silver or a silvery substance.

Silver in a sentence

• noun

  The necklace was made of solid silver.

• adjective

  He drove a silver saloon car to the airport.

• verb

  Craftsmen used to silver the back of glass to make mirrors.

• noun

  The price of silver rose sharply on the commodities market.

• adjective

  The gift was wrapped in silver paper and a red ribbon.

• verb

  Frost can silver the lawn overnight in late autumn.

Where does silver come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Silver comes straight from Old English, where it appeared as 'seolfor' or 'siolfor', the everyday name for the precious white metal. It traces back to a common Germanic ancestor, seen in the Old Norse 'silfr', Dutch 'zilver', and German 'Silber', and that shared family is one reason the word has stayed so stable across the northern languages. The deeper origin is uncertain: it may come from an ancient borrowed word for the metal that spread across Europe and parts of the Near East, since it does not fit neatly into the usual Indo-European patterns. From its earliest use it named both the metal and money or coin made from it, which is why 'silver' has long doubled as a word for cash and treasure. The modern spelling keeps the older '-er' ending rather than the Latin-style '-re', and the unstressed second syllable is the small trap, since the 'ver' is easy to slur in speech but must be written in full.

How the word is built

• silver (a single Germanic root; no prefix or suffix)