Solstice

How to spell solstice

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce solstice

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does solstice mean?

1. nounEither of the two times each year when the sun reaches its highest or lowest point in the sky, marking the longest and shortest days.

Solstice in a sentence

• The summer solstice brings the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.

• Ancient monuments were often aligned to track the winter solstice.

Where does solstice come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin solstitium, which joined sol, meaning 'sun', with a form of sistere, meaning 'to stand still' or 'to make stand'. The literal idea was that at midsummer and midwinter the sun seems to pause in its yearly march along the horizon before reversing direction, so it was poetically described as the sun standing still. Latin solstitium passed into Old French as solstice, and English adopted it in the 1200s and 1300s for the two yearly moments when day length reaches its extreme. The same sistere root that gives us the silent middle of the spelling also lies behind words like 'resist', 'insist', and 'consist', all carrying the notion of standing. Remembering that the second half is 'still standing' helps fix the -stice ending, which is otherwise easy to muddle.

How the word is built

• sol (sun)
• -stice (from Latin sistere: to stand still)