Spa

How to spell spa

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce spa

What does spa mean?

1. nounA resort or establishment offering health, relaxation, and beauty treatments, often around mineral water or a hot tub.

Spa in a sentence

• The hotel spa offers massages and a heated pool.

• They booked a weekend at a country spa to unwind.

Where does spa come from?

Language of origin: Other

This little word takes its name from Spa, a small town in eastern Belgium that became celebrated across Europe for its iron-rich mineral springs. From the late 1500s and into the 1600s, fashionable visitors travelled there to drink and bathe in the waters for their supposed health benefits, and the town's name slowly turned into a common noun for any resort built around healing springs. By the 1700s English writers were using 'spa' for any place where mineral water was taken as a cure, and the meaning later widened to cover modern health and beauty resorts, hot tubs, and pamper salons. The town's own name is thought to derive from a Walloon or Latin word linked to fountains or flowing water, though the exact root is debated. Because it began as a proper place name, the word stayed short and simple, with no prefix or suffix to trip up the speller.

How the word is built

• spa (a single unanalysable root; originally the name of the Belgian town Spa)