stratosphere

Etymology

The revised OED takes it as formed from English stratum + -o- + sphere in English, after German Stratosphäre in the geological and oceanographic senses and French stratosphère in the meteorological sense.^[2][3][4] Etymonline, Barnhart, Klein and the American Heritage Dictionary derive the word directly from French, a coinage of the French meteorologist Léon-Philippe Teisserenc de Bort, literally "sphere of layers",^[5][6][7][8] from Latin strātus (“a spreading out”) and the French ending of atmosphère.^[6][5][8] The OED finds the French term in the title of a paper Teisserenc de Bort read in Germany, on the division of the atmosphere into a troposphere and a stratosphere (1908 or earlier); the German geological term is from E. Suess (1901).^[2] The Latin noun is from sternō (“to spread out”),^[6][5] from Proto-Indo-European *stere- (“to spread”).^[5] Partridge notes that strato- is an irregular combining form, strati- being the correct one.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

In geology, the upper part of the Earth's crust, made largely of stratified rocks: 1908, in H. B. C. and W. J. Sollas's translation of E. Suess, a sense obsolete by 1922.^[2][5][3]

Semantic evolution

The meteorological sense, the region of the atmosphere above the troposphere, followed in 1909 in the American Monthly Weather Review;^[2][10] at first the word named the zone in which temperature changes little with height,^[2][10] and Etymonline describes it as the region where the temperature rises or stays steady with altitude.^[5] By analogy, oceanographers used it from 1932 for the bottom layer of the ocean, where temperature varies little with depth.^[2] Also from 1932 it had a colloquial figurative sense, the highest level or rank, as of prices or of society.^[2][10]

Timeline

• 1908 – in geology, the upper part of the Earth's crust (obsolete by 1922).^[2]
• 1909 – in meteorology, the region of the atmosphere above the troposphere.^[2][10]
• 1932 – figuratively, the highest level or rank.^[2]
• 1932 – in oceanography, the bottom layer of the ocean.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The layer of the atmosphere above the troposphere and below the mesosphere, in which temperature generally rises or changes little with height.^[11][10][2]
2. (informal) A very high or the highest level: After the merger, the company's share price went into the stratosphere.^[10][2]
3. (oceanography) The deepest layer of the ocean, where temperature changes little with depth.^[2]

Word family

• stratospheric
• stratospherically
• substratosphere

Related words

• stratum
• strata
• stratus
• sphere
• atmosphere
• troposphere
• strew

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
10. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins