Skyey

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /skaɪi/

Definitions

1. Pertaining to the vastness and color of the atmosphere above, often evoking feelings of wonder and celestial beauty through a dreamy visual effect
2. Describing a quality or appearance that resembles the expansive and colorful nature of the atmosphere, often conveying a sense of ethereal beauty and grandeur
3. Characterized by traits or colors that remind one of the open sky, including its brightness and huge scope

Etymology: "Skyey" is simply "sky" with the suffix "-ey" added, and the suffix is the more interesting half. It descends from an Old English adjective-forming ending, "-ig," that appears in words like "stony" and "blessedly"-type formations, which passed through Middle English as "-y" and eventually gave modern English the "-ey" spelling seen here. The same ending turns up in "clayey" and "milky," so "skyey" belongs to a small family of adjectives meaning "having the qualities of" the base noun. The base word "sky" has a surprising history of its own. It entered English from Old Norse "ský," meaning "cloud," and it displaced the native Old English word "heofon" for the sense of the visible vault above, so that the word for heaven and the word for the atmosphere once belonged to different vocabularies. "Skyey" therefore describes the atmosphere in a way the older English word for heaven never could.

Synonyms: heavenly, aerial