skyscraper
/ˈskaɪˌskreɪpər/noun
A very tall building reaching into the sky
From O.Norse, from Proto-Germanic sky (Originally “cloud”) + English; deeper origin not established by the supplied research scrape (The verbal base of scraper).
Lineage
sky
scrape
The story
Before skyscraper meant a building, it could mean a high-flying bird, a very tall man, or even a light sail high on a mast. The building sense appeared in 1888, amid the fast-rising city skylines of Chicago. The first half has a cloudy past: Old Norse ský meant “cloud,” and its deeper relatives connect to an ancient root meaning “cover” or “hide”—a distant cousin to words built from that same root, though not an obvious one at first glance. The second half is more literal than it sounds: a scraper is something that scrapes, so the compound pictures a structure tall enough to graze the sky. French gratte-ciel and German Wolkenkratzer make the same playful image, but they are parallel expressions, not the source of the English word.
Modern usage
An Urban Dictionary entry uses it for defecating while suspended against a restroom-stall wall.
- Heard in
- slang
Words from the same roots
Sources
- Etymonlineskyscraper, sky, agent, edifice
- Urban Dictionaryskyscraper
- Wikipediaskyscraper
- Wiktionaryskyscraper, sky