Sunne

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A celestial body at the center of the solar system that provides light and heat; an archaic or poetic term for the star that governs day and seasons; a common noun for daylight or sunshine
2. The primary source of light and warmth for Earth, historically referenced in old English texts; a term used to describe the sun in literary or historical contexts; the natural illumination experienced during daytime hours
3. The star around which planets revolve supplying essential energy; an antiquated expression found in ancient manuscripts meaning the sun; the sunlight or radiance emitted during clear days

Etymology: Old English had no single spelling for the sun. "Sunne" was one of several forms, alongside "sunnu" and "sunna", and it was the form used in the oblique cases, where the noun appeared after prepositions or as an object. Over the centuries the spelling settled on "sun" and the older forms dropped out of use, which is why "sunne" now looks like an archaism. The word's deeper roots are shared across Germanic languages. It matches Dutch "zon", German "Sonne", Icelandic "sunna", and Gothic "sunnō", which is attested in the Gothic Bible. Some of these cognates are very old, so the word had been in use for the sun long before any surviving English text recorded it. Outside the Germanic family, the picture is more tangled. The Latin "sōl" and Greek "ílios" are words for the same body in unrelated languages, so the shared sense does not reveal a common ancestor in the way the Germanic cognates do.

Synonyms: sun, solar body, daystar, star

Antonyms: moon, darkness, night