Turtles

How to spell turtles

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce turtles

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does turtles mean?

1. nounReptiles with a bony or cartilaginous shell, living in water or on land.

Turtles in a sentence

• The aquarium keeps several giant sea turtles in its largest tank.

• Green turtles return to the same beach each year to lay their eggs.

Where does turtles come from?

Language of origin: French

The reptile word turtle entered English in the 1600s, most likely from the French tortue, meaning 'tortoise', which itself traces back to a late Latin form tortuca. English-speaking sailors seem to have reshaped that foreign-sounding tortue into the more familiar turtle, perhaps by association with an older, unrelated turtle, the turtledove, whose name came from the Latin turtur, an imitation of the bird's soft cooing call. So two quite separate creatures, a sea reptile and a gentle dove, ended up sharing a spelling in English purely by accident of the ear. The animal sense soon broadened to cover the slow land-dwelling tortoises and the freshwater terrapins as well. The plural simply adds -s, giving turtles, and the spelling trap is the unstressed second syllable that sounds like a vague 'uhl', easily lost between the t's.

How the word is built

• turtle (from French tortue: tortoise)
• -s (plural)