halo

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Definitions (19)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (5)

  1. noun A circular band of colored light around a light source, as around the sun or moon, caused by the refraction and reflection of light by ice particles suspended in the intervening atmosphere.
  2. noun Something resembling this band.
  3. noun A luminous ring or disk of light surrounding the heads or bodies of sacred figures, such as saints, in religious paintings; a nimbus.
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Examples

  • He was naked, naked as a tree in winter, but a halo was about his head, and he shone like a saint. —  The Greatest Survival Stories Ever Told
  • But then she found herself shooting through the open window like a missile leaving its halo, only the halo was almost too small for the missile. —  When the Wind Blows
  • We had been flung far out of the main disc, and the sparse orange-red stars of the halo were a foreground to the galaxy itself, a pool of curdled light that stretched to right and left as far as you could see. —  Asimov's Science Fiction
  • He merely smiled at her (the light making her hair seem like a halo, the fabric of her blouse clinging slightly to the undercurve of her breast, no, mustn't notice that, must think instead of motherhood and filial devotion. —  Capitol
  • In the "Light of the World," the halo is an accident -- the great white moon, happening to rise behind the Christ's head -- and there we have the halo, simple, natural, only suggestive, not artificial. —  Pictures Every Child Should Know A Selection of the World's Art Masterpieces for Young People
 

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Halo has been looked up 355 times, favorited 0 times, listed 25 times, and commented on once.

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Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Medieval Latin halō, from accusative of Latin halōs, from Greek, threshing floor, disk of or around the sun or moon.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. In Middle English hale; = French halo = Spanish halo, halon = Portuguese halão = Italian alone, from Latin halos, genitive and accusative halo (= Arabic hēlah = Hindustani hālah, a halo), from Greek ἄλως, genitive and accusative ἄλω, Epic ἀλωή, a threshing-floor (on which the oxen trod out a circular path), hence the round disk of the sun or moon, later a halo around them, from ἀλεῖν, grind.
  2. from halo, n.
 

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/ˈheɪloʊ/
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