Skyline

How to spell skyline

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce skyline

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does skyline mean?

1. nounThe outline of buildings, hills, or other shapes seen against the background of the sky.

Skyline in a sentence

• The city skyline glittered with office towers as the sun set.

• From the hotel roof you can see the entire skyline stretching to the river.

Where does skyline come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This is a transparent English compound joining 'sky' and 'line', both of which arrived from quite different directions. 'Sky' came into Middle English from the Old Norse word 'sky', which originally meant 'cloud', a sense brought over by Norse settlers before it broadened to mean the whole vault of the heavens. 'Line' descends from the Latin 'linea', a linen thread or string used to mark a straight edge, which passed through Old French into English. The compound 'skyline' is comparatively recent, appearing in the nineteenth century to describe the line where the earth or sea seems to meet the sky, that is, the horizon. By the late 1800s it had taken on its now-dominant meaning: the distinctive outline of buildings, hills, or trees seen against the sky, an image made famous by the rising silhouettes of city skyscrapers.

How the word is built

• sky (the heavens, from Old Norse)
• line (a boundary or outline, from Latin linea)