Tropics

How to spell tropics

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tropics

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tropics mean?

1. nounThe warm region of the Earth lying between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn, on either side of the equator.

Tropics in a sentence

• They retired to the tropics for the year-round warm weather.

• Humidity in the tropics kept the laboratory equipment from drying out.

Where does tropics come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek tropikos, meaning 'of the turning', built on tropos, which literally meant 'a turn' or 'a turning'. Ancient astronomers used it because the sun appears to reach a turning point in the sky at the solstices, the moments when it stops moving toward one pole and turns back; the imaginary circles marking those limits became the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. Latin took the term as tropicus, and English adopted it in the late 1300s, first for those celestial circles. By the seventeenth century the plural 'the tropics' had come to name the hot region of the Earth that lies between those two lines. The same Greek root for turning also survives in 'trophy' and in 'trope', a figurative turn of phrase, which is a useful reminder that the spelling keeps the single 'p'.

How the word is built

• trop- (from Greek tropos: a turn)
• -ic (adjective suffix)
• -s (plural noun)