Volcanoes

How to spell volcanoes

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce volcanoes

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does volcanoes mean?

1. nounMountains or openings in the earth's crust through which molten rock, ash, and gas can erupt.

Volcanoes in a sentence

• The geology lecture covered the active volcanoes along the Pacific coast.

• Several dormant volcanoes ring the edge of the island.

Where does volcanoes come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This is the plural of 'volcano', which English borrowed from the Italian 'vulcano' in the early 1600s, around the age of exploration when European sailors and scholars were describing the fiery mountains of the Mediterranean. The Italian word traces back to the Latin 'Vulcanus', the name of the Roman god of fire and metalworking, who was imagined to keep his forge beneath Mount Etna in Sicily. The island of Vulcano, just north of Sicily, took its name directly from the god, and its smoking crater gave the whole class of mountains its label. The plural is formed with '-es' rather than just '-s', following the pattern of other words ending in '-o' that came through Latin or Italian, which is exactly the spelling trap, since many writers are unsure whether to write 'volcanoes' or 'volcanos'. The same Vulcan root still survives in the words 'vulcanise' and 'vulcanite', terms from the rubber industry that honour the god of fire.

How the word is built

• volcan- (from Vulcan, Roman god of fire)
• -o (noun stem)
• -es (plural ending)