HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY

To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key.

Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window.

guide to the dictionary

halo- or hal-

pref.

1. Salt: halophyte.

2. Halogen: halocarbon.

[French, from Greek, from hals, hal-, salt, sea; see sal- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.]

ha·lo

(hālō)

n. pl. ha·los or ha·loes

a. A luminous ring or disk of light surrounding the heads or bodies of sacred figures, such as saints, in religious paintings; a nimbus.

b. A ring or disk resembling the halo of a sacred figure: "She had a halo of red hair floating over a delicate ivory face" (Judith Ortiz Cofer).

c. A feeling of glory, reverence, or admiration associated with a person or thing: "By the 1930s, insulin's halo had begun to tarnish, for it became clear that patients who had the illness ... were prone to problems of the small blood vessel" (James S. Hirsch).

a. 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.

b. A roughly spherical region of relatively dust-free space surrounding a galaxy and extending beyond the visible parts of the galaxy. Galactic halos contain stars (often located in globular clusters), gas, and dark matter.

tr.v. ha·loed, ha·lo·ing, ha·loes

To encircle with a halo.

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

(click for a larger image)

halo

solar halo

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

Indo-European Roots

Semitic Roots

The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

American Heritage Dictionary Products

HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY

THE USAGE PANEL

AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG

INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES?

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

American Heritage Dictionary Products