aurora

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin aurōra (“dawn; the goddess of dawn”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} perhaps partly through aurore.^[7][3] The Latin noun goes back to an earlier Latin *ausōsa,^[8][9] from Proto-Indo-European *aus- (“to shine”), especially of the dawn,^[2][5][8] the root of east;^[4][9][7] its cognates include Ancient Greek ἠώς (ēṓs, “dawn”), aušra (“dawn”) and auster (“south wind”).^[8][2] Klein derives aurum (“gold”) from the same root,^[8] and Partridge mentions a derivation of aurora from that word.^[10] The name aurora borealis, "northern dawn", was introduced by the French scientist Pierre Gassendi in 1621.^[7][4][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The dawn, the light of morning: about 1386, in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, in Barnhart,^[7] the late 14th century in Etymonline.^[2] The OED's first quotation is from Caxton's Golden Legend (1483).^[3]

Semantic evolution

The personified goddess of dawn, rising with rosy fingers, appears in English from 1610,^[3] and Johnson (1755) gave "the goddess that opens the gates of day; poetically, the morning", after a sense "a species of crowfoot".^[11] Poets used the word for the East from 1617.^[3] The luminous display of the polar sky, already called aurora borealis by Gassendi, is recorded in English from 1703, in a letter of the astronomer John Flamsteed;^[3][4] the term was explained as "northern light" in Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1727–51).^[7] The southern counterpart is the aurora australis, "southern dawn".^[8][10] The colour of the sky at sunrise, a rich orange, has been called aurora since the 17th century,^[12] 1791 in the OED,^[3] and the figurative use for a beginning dates from 1806.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1386 – the dawn.^[7]
• 1610 – the Roman goddess of the dawn.^[3]
• 1617 – (poetic) the East.^[3]
• 1621 – aurora borealis, named by Gassendi.^[7][8]
• 1703 – the luminous phenomenon of the polar sky.^[3]
• 1791 – a rich orange colour.^[3]
• 1806 – figuratively, a beginning.^[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. Bands or curtains of coloured light that move across the night sky in the polar regions, caused by charged particles from the sun striking the upper atmosphere; the aurora borealis or the aurora australis.
2. (poetic) The dawn.
3. (capitalized) The Roman goddess of the dawn.
4. (literary) The beginning or early period of something.

Word family

• auroral
• aurorean
• aurora australis
• aurora borealis

Related words

• east
• Easter
• aureate
• boreal
• austral

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d e f g Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press