Earth & SkyGreek → English
Halo
/ˈheɪloʊ/noun
A ring of light around a head in art, or around the sun or moon.
The Greek roots
ἅλως
hálōs
threshing floor; disc of the sun
Literally: “threshing floor”
Follow a root:ἅλως1 word
The story of the word
A hálōs was the round floor where oxen walked in circles to tread grain out of the ear. Greek astronomers borrowed the shape for the bright ring seen around the moon through high ice cloud, and that is the sense Latin passed on. The painted ring above a saint took the name in English only later; the older word for it was nimbus. Ice crystals still draw the original one, at twenty-two degrees from the moon, on cold clear nights.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
In a sentence
There was a halo around the moon, which the shepherd read as rain.