Tigers

How to spell tigers

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tigers

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tigers mean?

1. nounPlural of tiger: large, striped Asian wild cats of the cat family.

Tigers in a sentence

• The zoo keeps three tigers in a large enclosure.

• Wild tigers are now found in only a few forests across Asia.

Where does tigers come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Latin tigris, which the Romans borrowed from the Greek tigris, the name for the big striped Asian cat. The Greeks in turn seem to have picked it up from an Iranian source; an Old Persian or related word meaning something like 'arrow' or 'sharp, pointed' may lie behind it, perhaps a nod to the animal's speed or to the swift Tigris river. English took the word in through Old French and Old English forms during the medieval period, settling on 'tiger', and the plural is formed simply by adding -s. The spelling is regular for English, so the only real trap is remembering the single 'g' and the plain -ers ending rather than any doubling.

How the word is built

• tiger (large striped cat)
• -s (plural)