Supernova

How to spell supernova

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce supernova

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does supernova mean?

1. nounA massive stellar explosion in which a dying star briefly outshines an entire galaxy before fading.

Supernova in a sentence

• The telescope captured the faint afterglow of a distant supernova.

• Astronomers calculate the age of a supernova from the spreading shell of gas it leaves behind.

Where does supernova come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is a modern scientific coinage built from two Latin pieces. The element 'super-' means 'above' or 'beyond', and 'nova' is the Latin feminine adjective for 'new', shortened from the phrase 'nova stella', literally 'new star', which astronomers used for a faint star that suddenly flared into visibility. By the early twentieth century 'nova' was an established term for such a brightening, so when astronomers Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky needed a name for the far more violent stellar explosions they were studying, they prefixed 'super-' to mark them as vastly more powerful; the term 'supernova' appears in their work from the early 1930s. The plural takes the Latin form 'supernovae', though 'supernovas' is also accepted. The spelling is essentially phonetic once you remember it is simply 'super' joined directly to 'nova', with no space and no extra letters.

How the word is built

• super- (above, beyond)
• nova (from Latin novus 'new', as in nova stella 'new star')