# ethereal

Pronunciation: say "i-THEER-ee-uhl" US /ɪˈθɪɚ.i.əl/, UK /ɪˈθɪə.ɹɪ.əl/, AUS /iˈθɪə̯.ri.əl/

## Adjective

1. Extremely light, airy and delicate, almost spiritlike, as a form, a manner or a thought may be.
   - Simple: Very light, soft and delicate, almost like a spirit.
   - _Her ethereal soprano seemed to float above the rest of the choir._
   - _Morning fog gave the old garden an ethereal look, as if it might vanish at a touch._
2. Relating to the immaterial realm, which the sky and the regions beyond it symbolize and which earlier ages identified with them.
   - Simple: Belonging to the world that cannot be touched or seen, often pictured as the sky or heaven.
   - _The poem imagines the dead rising into an ethereal realm where earthly cares cannot follow._
   - _In her sermon, the minister urged the congregation to set their minds on ethereal things rather than on money and possessions._
3. Relating to the ether, a supposed invisible, air-like element filling all of space, or to the regions high above the earth or beyond its atmosphere.
   - Simple: About the sky high above the earth, or about an invisible air thought to fill all of space.
   - _Older physics textbooks describe light as a wave traveling through an ethereal medium thought to fill space._
   - _Nineteenth-century physicists searched for an ethereal medium that they believed carried light through empty space._

## Other meanings

- (noun) Short for ethereal wave: a dreamy, atmospheric style of dark wave music that grew out of gothic rock, with echoing guitars and soft vocals.

## Origin

Ancient Greek aithérios, meaning "relating to the upper air," gave Latin aetherius, "having to do with the ether, the heavens, the sky or the upper air," the source of the English word. On the surface it looks like ether plus -ial.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/ethereal (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).