how
/haʊ/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: 6.24 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
adv
In what manner
adv
In what manner:
adv
In what manner:
adv
In what manner:
adv
In what manner:
adv
In what manner:
adv
In what manner:
Example Sentences
- "How often do you practice?"
- "The gauge indicated how hot the oven was."
- "How soon can I see the doctor?"
- "No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly wait."
- "How damaged is her self-esteem?"
- "Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.[…]But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts as a territory, what counts as output and how to value it. Indeed, economists are still tweaking it."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kʷ- Proto-Indo-European *kʷís Proto-Germanic *hwō Old English hū Middle English how English how From Middle English how, hou, hu, hwu, from Old English hū, from Proto-West Germanic *hwō, from Proto-Germanic *hwō (“through what, how”), from the same root as hwæt (“who, what”). /hw/ > /h/ due to wh-cluster reduction in Old English; compare who, which underwent this change later, and thus is spelt wh (Middle English spelling of /hw/) but pronounced /h/ (it previously had a different vowel, hence avoided the spelling and sound change in Old English). Vowel change per Great Vowel Shift. Akin to Scots hoo, foo (“how”), North Frisian ho, hü, hur (“how”), Saterland Frisian wo (“how”), West Frisian hoe (“how”), Dutch hoe (“how”), Low German ho, wo, wu (“how”), German wie (“how”), Swedish hur (“how”). See who and compare why.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /haʊ/
- British English: /haʊ/
Usage
- Informal
- American usage
- Countable
- Uncountable