skyscraper

Formed as a compound of sky and scraper, this word was first applied to the tall steel-frame buildings rising in American cities like New York and Chicago in the 1880s.

The word arrived to describe a very specific new kind of structure — the steel-frame towers that only became possible in the 1880s — and has stuck to that meaning ever since.

It's built plainly from two familiar English words, sky and scraper, rather than borrowed from elsewhere.