halo

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin halōs (“a ring of light round the sun or moon”), or its accusative halō,^[2][3][4] which the Shorter Oxford and Hoad take through halo,^[5][6] borrowed from Ancient Greek ἅλως (hálōs, “threshing floor; disk of the sun, moon, or a shield”).^[2][3][7] The Greek word is of unknown origin.^[2][4] Etymonline and Barnhart think "threshing floor" was the original sense, the round path that the oxen trod giving the idea of a disk,^[2][8] and Skeat describes the same path.^[9] The OED compares halo, alone and halon, whose forms imply a Latin stem in -n-;^[3][10] Barnhart allows that English took the word partly through the Spanish and French forms.^[4] Merriam-Webster relates the Greek noun to ἅλων (hálōn, “threshing floor”).^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

A circle of light seen round the sun, the moon or another bright body: the OED's first quotation is from William Fulke's book on meteors of 1563,^[3][12] and Etymonline dates the word to the 1560s.^[2] Dictionary.com gives 1555–65,^[13] while Merriam-Webster's first known use is 1603.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The religious sense, the disk of light painted round the heads of Christ and the saints, followed in 1646, in Sir Thomas Browne;^[3][4][12] the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins dates it to around the middle of the 17th century.^[14] Johnson (1755) still knew only the meteorological sense, "a red circle round the sun or moon", quoting Newton's Opticks.^[15] The figurative sense, the glory with which a person or thing seems to be surrounded when viewed with admiration, is first recorded in Byron's Giaour of 1813, and in the same year Shelley used the word for other luminous circles and then for any ring.^[3][6] Later uses include a coloured ring round a nipple or a pustule (1706),^[3] a women's hat that framed the face (1899)^[3][12] and a bright or dark ring in photography (1941).^[3][14] The verb, to surround with a halo, is recorded from 1801, in Southey;^[3][4][11] Etymonline finds it implied in haloed in 1791.^[2]

Timeline

• 1563 – a ring of light round the sun or moon.^[3]
• 1646 – the disk of light round the head of a saint.^[3][4]
• 1706 – a coloured ring round a nipple or pustule.^[3]
• 1801 – verb, to surround with a halo.^[3][11]
• 1813 – figurative, an aura of glory; any ring of light.^[3]
• 1899 – a style of women's hat.^[3]
• 1941 – a ring in a photographic image.^[3]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A disk or ring of light shown round the head of a saint, an angel or a divine figure in art; a nimbus: The fresco shows each apostle with a gilded halo.
2. A circle of light round the sun or moon, caused by light refracted through ice crystals in the air.
3. An aura of glory or admiration surrounding a person, thing or event.
4. (astronomy) A roughly spherical cloud of stars surrounding a spiral galaxy.
5. Any ring or circle resembling a halo.

Verb

1. To surround with a halo or as if with a halo: Street lamps haloed by the drizzle lined the quay.

Word family

• enhalo
• halo blight
• halo effect

Related words

• halation
• aureole
• nimbus
• corona

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
12. ^ a b c Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
13. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
14. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.