Other forms: auras
An aura is the feeling that comes off a person or a place before anyone has said a word. The teacher who walks in and the room goes quiet; a cold, still church on a Tuesday morning.
It takes OF: an aura of calm, an aura of mystery, an aura of authority that hangs around him in meetings. There is a literal version as well — the ring of light painted round a saint's head, and the coloured field some people claim to see around a body and photograph. Medicine uses aura for something precise: the strange lights, smells or feelings that arrive minutes before a migraine or an epileptic seizure, warning that one is on the way. Since about 2024 the word has had a slang life online, where aura means presence or charisma, and you lose aura points by doing something embarrassing in public. The plural is auras.
1nounatmosphereThe feeling or quality that seems to surround a person or place.
“The old library has an aura of calm that survives the tourists.”
synonyms: atmosphere, air
2nounauraA soft light said to surround a body or figure.
“In the painting a golden aura circles the saint's head.”
3nounmedicineIn medicine, the sensations that come just before a migraine or a seizure.
“She gets an aura first, flashing lights at the edge of her vision.”
4nounpersonalPersonal presence or charisma.
“He said nothing all evening and somehow left with his aura intact.”
aura is an atmosphere or feeling.
Aura is the Latin word aura, 'a breeze, a breath of air, the air', taken from Ancient Greek aura, 'breeze, soft wind', which rests on the Greek word for air. So a person's aura began as literal moving air around them, and it behaves like weather still: you feel it before you can point at it.
Latin
aura
English, today
aura
Built from
Learned borrowing from Latin aura. Latin aura (“a breeze, a breath of air, the air”), from Ancient Greek αὔρα (“breeze, soft wind”), from ἀήρ (“air”). a doublet of east and auster and air and aria. presence originated in the early 2020s and was popularized on TikTok around May 2024.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA