Steamy

How to spell steamy

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce steamy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does steamy mean?

1. adjectiveHot and humid, or covered with the vapour that rises from hot water.
2. adjectiveMarked by passion or eroticism, especially in a film or novel.

Steamy in a sentence

• The bathroom mirror was too steamy to see her reflection.

• The novel was famous for its steamy romance plot.

• A steamy bowl of soup sat waiting on the kitchen counter.

• Critics called the film too steamy for a family audience.

Where does steamy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is the adjective form of 'steam', which descends from the Old English 'steam', meaning the vapour or smoke that rises from a hot or boiling substance. The Old English noun is related to similar words in other Germanic languages, such as the Dutch 'stoom', and originally covered not just water vapour but any rising exhalation or smell. The familiar adjective 'steamy' was formed simply by adding the productive English ending '-y', meaning 'full of' or 'covered with', and it was in use by around the 1600s to describe air or surfaces thick with hot vapour. From its literal sense of misted glass and humid rooms, the word later took on a figurative meaning of passionate or erotically charged, a use that grew common in the twentieth century. The spelling is gently deceptive because the long 'ee' sound is written with the 'ea' digraph inherited from the Old English root, not the more obvious 'ee'.

How the word is built

• steam (vapour from hot water, from Old English steam)
• -y (adjective suffix, full of or characterised by)