Skeletons

How to spell skeletons

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce skeletons

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does skeletons mean?

1. nounThe internal bony frameworks of bodies; also, by extension, the bare supporting structures of buildings or plans.

Skeletons in a sentence

• The museum displays two complete dinosaur skeletons in the main hall.

• The steel skeletons of the unfinished towers rose above the city.

Where does skeletons come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek skeletos, an adjective meaning 'dried up' or 'withered', which was applied to a desiccated body or mummy. That adjective grew out of the verb skellein, 'to dry up' or 'to parch', the idea being that what remained after the flesh had wasted away was the dry framework of bones. Greek physicians used the fuller phrase skeleton soma, literally 'dried-up body', and the first word eventually stood alone for the bony structure itself. Scientific Latin borrowed it as sceletus, and English took it up in the late 1500s, settling on the spelling with the central 'e' that mirrors the Greek vowel. The plural simply adds '-s', but the unstressed middle syllables (the schwa in -el-e-ton) are exactly why writers sometimes lose track of which vowels belong where.

How the word is built

• skelet- (from Greek skeletos: dried up, mummified body)
• -on (noun)
• -s (plural)