Yoga

How to spell yoga

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce yoga

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does yoga mean?

1. nounA system of physical postures, breathing techniques, and meditation, originating in India and now widely practised for fitness and relaxation.

Yoga in a sentence

• She rolls out her mat for a quiet hour of yoga every morning.

• The community centre offers a beginners yoga class on Tuesday evenings.

Where does yoga come from?

Language of origin: Sanskrit

Yoga comes directly from the Sanskrit word yoga, which literally meant a 'yoking' or 'joining together', and is built on the root yuj, meaning 'to join' or 'to harness', much as one harnesses an animal to a cart. From that physical image of yoking, the term came to describe the disciplined joining of body, mind, and breath in the spiritual practices of ancient India. The very same yuj root is a distant cousin of the English word 'yoke', since both trace back to a shared Indo-European ancestor for binding or joining. English adopted yoga in the early 1800s as Western scholars and travellers began writing about Hindu philosophy, and the modern fitness sense of stretching and postures grew popular only in the twentieth century. Because the word is a clean transliteration from Sanskrit, its spelling is refreshingly regular: it sounds exactly as it looks, with no silent letters or hidden traps.

How the word is built

• yoga (a single Sanskrit root meaning 'union' or 'yoking'; not built from separable prefixes or suffixes in English)