tephra
UK/ˈtɛ.fɹə/
tephra noun: the solid material thrown into the air by a volcanic eruption that settles on the surrounding areas.
Noun
tephra (countable and uncountable, plural tephras)
- The solid material thrown into the air by a volcanic eruption that settles on the surrounding areas.
- The sky would have darkened with sheer volume of ash, the grapes would have withered upon the vine; misfortune would have fallen with the inexorability of volcanic tephra upon rich and poor alike.2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society, published 2011, page 126
- Over a five-year research period, RESET is correlating tephras from their volcanic sources to where they fell in deep ocean and lake sediments, and even further into important archaeological sites in Europe, western Asia and North Africa.2011, Chris Stringer, The Origin of Our Species, Penguin, published 2012, page 46
Forms of tephra
| plural | tephras |
|---|
Origin of tephra
From the Ancient Greek τέφρα (téphra, “ash”).
Words formed from tephra
Questions about tephra
- What does tephra mean?
- Tephra means the solid material thrown into the air by a volcanic eruption that settles on the surrounding areas.
- What part of speech is tephra?
- Tephra is a noun.
- How do you pronounce tephra?
- Tephra is pronounced /ˈtɛ.fɹə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of tephra?
- The plural of tephra is tephras.
Words near tephra in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tephra (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-tephra.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tephra.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tephra. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.