Earth & SkyGreek → English
Tropic
/ˈtrɒpɪk/noun
Either of the two lines of latitude, at about 23.4 degrees north and south, where the sun stands overhead at a solstice.
The Greek roots
τροπή
tropḗ
a turning
Literally: “of the turning”
Follow a root:τροπή8 words
The story of the word
The tropic is where the sun turns. At the solstice it stops climbing in the sky and heads back the other way, and the two circles mark the furthest north and south that happens: an astronomical fact long before it was a word about heat and palm trees. Tropḗ also produced heliotrope, the plant that turns to the sun, and trophy, from tropaion, the monument raised on the spot where the enemy turned and ran.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
Same family
trophyheliotropetropeentropy
In a sentence
We crossed the Tropic of Cancer somewhere over the Gulf.
Nothing in the tropics prepares you for how fast it gets dark.