Summertime

How to spell summertime

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce summertime

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does summertime mean?

1. nounThe season of summer, regarded as a period of the year.

Summertime in a sentence

• The cottage is only rented out during summertime.

• Long evenings and warm weather make summertime her favourite season.

Where does summertime come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound that simply joins 'summer' and 'time', two of the oldest words in the language. 'Summer' descends from the Old English 'sumor', which shares roots with the Old High German 'sumar' and goes back to a Proto-Germanic word for the warm half of the year. 'Time' comes from the Old English 'tima', meaning a stretch or season, related to 'tide' in its older sense of a fixed period. The two have been written together as a single word since the Middle English period to mean the season of summer regarded as a time of year. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the only real spelling question is remembering that it is closed up into one word rather than written as two.

How the word is built

• summer (the warm season)
• time (period) = closed compound noun