Sumo

How to spell sumo

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sumo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sumo mean?

1. nounA traditional Japanese form of heavyweight wrestling in which a competitor tries to force the opponent out of the ring or to the ground.

Sumo in a sentence

• The tournament featured the country's finest sumo champions.

• He travelled to Tokyo to watch a live sumo match.

Where does sumo come from?

Language of origin: Japanese

This word comes directly from the Japanese sumō, written with characters that carry the sense of 'striking one another' or 'competing in strength'. The sport itself is ancient, with roots in Shinto religious ritual where bouts were once performed to entertain the gods and ensure a good harvest, so the term carried a ceremonial weight long before it became a spectator sport. English speakers adopted the word in the nineteenth century as contact with Japan increased, keeping the original spelling almost unchanged and simply dropping the long-vowel mark over the final letter. Because it is a clean phonetic borrowing with no Latin or Greek baggage, the spelling is unusually faithful to how it sounds. The chief trap for writers is simply that it is short and exotic, and a stray doubled letter or an added 'e' can creep in.

How the word is built

• sumo (single root, from Japanese sumō, the wrestling sport); no prefix or suffix