atmosphere
Pluralatmospheres
- 1The body of gases surrounding the Earth, or surrounding any other planet, star, or object in space.
Spacecraft heat up dramatically as they re-enter the atmosphere.
Each planet's atmosphere differs in thickness and chemical makeup.
Note
The literal sense, and the one the word was built for: New Latin atmosphaera, from Greek atmós, "steam," and sphaîra, "sphere," which reached English through French. It takes a plural whenever bodies or eras differ. Each planet has its own, and glaciologists treat the ice of Antarctica and Greenland as storehouses of the Earth's former atmospheres. Said of our own planet, it usually comes with the or our.
- 2The apparent mood or feeling sensed in a particular environment.
The old library had an atmosphere of quiet concentration.
Festive decorations gave the whole street a cheerful atmosphere.
Note
A mood borrowed from the air we breathe usually arrives with an of-phrase or an adjective. Tennyson's In Memoriam (1850) has children sitting "cold in that atmosphere of Death." The adjective route is just as common: a great atmosphere at a football match, or a party "with a happy atmosphere." Mood and feeling are its closest synonyms.
- 3The conditions, such as music and lighting, that shape the mood felt in an environment.
The director used dim lighting and a low hum to build atmosphere in the scene.
Caterers manage food, decor, and music to control the atmosphere of an event.
Note
Here the word names the causes rather than the feeling: lighting, music and decor that a director or host can arrange. That is why it is often uncountable and pairs with verbs of making, such as build, create or add, much like its synonyms ambiance and air. Keep it apart from the mood itself. The dim lights are atmosphere in this sense, and the hush they produce is the other.
- 4The air contained within a particular location or enclosed space.
Ventilation systems keep the atmosphere in the factory breathable.
The atmosphere inside the greenhouse stayed warm and humid all winter.
Similarair
Note
Novelists reach for this sense when the air itself has a color or a weather. Letitia Elizabeth Landon writes of a "rich purple atmosphere" in 1834, and Marie Belloc Lowndes's The Lodger (1913) has the "fog-laden, drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road." Because it sits so close to the mood sense, "improved the atmosphere" can read both ways. When the Underground was electrified in 1905, it was the air that changed.
- 5A unit of pressure equal to 101,325 pascals, roughly the atmospheric pressure at sea level.
The tank was pressurized to three atmospheres before testing.
Standard sea-level pressure is defined as one atmosphere.
Note
A pressure unit with its own symbol, atm, and one that is naturally counted in plurals. The Canadian Patent Office Record and Register of Copyrights (1959) specifies reactions run "under a pressure of at least 30 atmospheres." The number reads as a multiple of sea-level pressure, so three atmospheres is about three times the pressure of the air at sea level.
- 6Background performers in a scene who have no spoken lines.
She spent her first summer in Los Angeles working as atmosphere, crossing the street behind the stars in take after take.
Casting brought in additional atmosphere to populate the ballroom.
Similarextras, background
Note
Film and television jargon for the people who fill a shot without speaking. It works as a mass noun, so performers work or appear as atmosphere, never as "an atmosphere." Its neighbors are extras and background actors, and the choice can depend on who is talking. William R. Phillippe's The Pastor's Diary (2015) recalls being background to the director and atmosphere to the producer.
Practice
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Origin
Borrowed from French atmosphère, from New Latin atmosphaera, which comes from the Ancient Greek words ἀτμός (atmós, "steam") and σφαῖρα (sphaîra, "sphere").