ziggurat
/ˈzɪɡʊˌɹæt/noun
ziggurat is a noun meaning “A temple tower of the ancient Mesopotamian valley, having the form of a terraced pyramid of successively receding stories” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled Z-I-G-G-U-R-A-T and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 9 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of ziggurat is ziggurats.
What does ziggurat mean?
noun
- 1
A temple tower of the ancient Mesopotamian valley, having the form of a terraced pyramid of successively receding stories
- 2
Any building with similar style or shape.
He works in an old ziggurat of an office building.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce ziggurat?
- /ˈzɪɡʊˌɹæt/
- /ˈzɪɡəˌɹæt/
Ziggurat has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-ziggurat.wav, En-us-ziggurat.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of ziggurat
- ziggurats plural
- ziggarat
- zigurat
- ziqqurat
- ziqqurrat
- zikkurat
- zikurat
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is ziggurat?
Ziggurat appears about once in every 9 million words in written English, the 90,432nd 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).
Ziggurat in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense temple tower of the ancient Mesopotamian valley:
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 ziggurat come from?
Learned borrowing from Akkadian 𒅆𒂍𒉪 (ziqqurratum).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).