Earth & SkyGreek → English
Heliacal
/hɪˈlaɪəkəl/adjective
Describing a star's first reappearance at dawn after weeks lost in the sun's glare.
The Greek roots
ἥλιος
hḗlios
sun
Literally: “belonging to the sun”
Follow a root:ἥλιος14 words
The story of the word
Egyptian agriculture ran on one such event. The heliacal rising of Sirius announced the Nile flood, and the calendar was pinned to it. Greek ἡλιακός meant nothing more elaborate than belonging to the sun, and the same ἥλιος named the element helium after it was found in the sun's spectrum before anyone found it on earth.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
heliumheliocentricperihelionheliotrope
In a sentence
They camped in the desert to catch the heliacal rising of Sirius.