Transatlantic

How to spell transatlantic

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce transatlantic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does transatlantic mean?

1. adjectiveCrossing or relating to both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, especially between Europe and North America.

Transatlantic in a sentence

• The company booked a transatlantic flight to New York for its directors.

• The engineers laid a transatlantic cable to carry telephone calls between the two continents.

Where does transatlantic come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word joins the Latin prefix trans-, meaning 'across' or 'on the far side of', to Atlantic, the name of the ocean lying between Europe, Africa and the Americas. Atlantic itself traces back through Latin to the Greek Atlantikos, literally 'of Atlas', because the ancient Greeks named the waters beyond the Strait of Gibraltar after the Titan Atlas, whose Atlas Mountains stood at the western edge of their known world. The compound was assembled in English in the eighteenth century, when regular sailing and later steamship crossings made journeys 'across the Atlantic' a common subject. By the nineteenth century it had broadened from describing voyages and cables to describing anything spanning Britain and North America, including politics, trade and accents. The spelling trap is purely about the joins: a single s after trans, the t of Atlantic kept intact, and no awkward doubling where the two parts meet.

How the word is built

• trans- (across)
• Atlantic (the Atlantic Ocean, from Atlas)