Virgin

How to spell virgin

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce virgin

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does virgin mean?

1. adjectiveUntouched, unused, or in its original natural state.

Virgin in a sentence

• The recipe calls for two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

• Loggers were finally barred from the last stretch of virgin rainforest.

Where does virgin come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin virgo, with the stem virgin-, meaning a young unmarried woman or maiden. It entered English in the 1200s through Old French virgine, at first chiefly as a religious term referring to the Virgin Mary and to people who had not had sexual relations. The literal sense of an untouched or pure maiden quite naturally widened, so that by the 1500s 'virgin' could describe anything fresh, unspoiled, or never before used, as in virgin soil or virgin forest. The same Latin root survives in the zodiac sign Virgo and in the woman's name Virginia. Because the spelling preserves the Latin stem virgin- exactly, the trickiest point for writers is simply remembering the single -g- pronounced as a soft 'j' and the unstressed second vowel.

How the word is built

• virg- (from Latin virgo, virginis: maiden, young unmarried woman)
• -in (anglicised ending from the inflected stem virgin-)