aphotic
aphot·ic/eɪˈfoʊtɪk/adjective
aphotic is an adjective meaning “Having no light, especially no sunlight” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-P-H-O-T-I-C and has 2 syllables (aphot·ic), and it appears about once in every 65 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does aphotic mean?
adjective
- 1
Having no light, especially no sunlight.
- 2
Describing that part of deep lakes and oceans where less than one per cent of sunlight penetrates and where photosynthesis is not possible.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce aphotic?
- UK /eɪˈfəʊtɪk/
- US /eɪˈfoʊtɪk/
Aphotic has 2 syllables, split aphot·ic in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-I_learned_some_phrases-aphotic.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of aphotic
- more aphotic comparative
- most aphotic superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is aphotic?
Aphotic appears about once in every 65 million words in written English, the 252,559th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Aphotic in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense having no light, especially no sunlight:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does aphotic come from?
From a- (prefix meaning ‘not; without; opposite of’) + photic.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).