was
/wəz/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 6.82 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
verb
verb
Used in phrases with existential there when the semantic subject is (usually third-person) plural.
Colloquial
name
A surname.
noun
plural of WA
Example Sentences
- "I was castigated and scorned."
- "It was a really humongous slice of cake."
- "I killed my poor father, Tuesday was a week, for doing the like of that."
- "He saw it clear enough, now that the lordling had pointed it out. “They couldn't have froze. Not if the Wall was weeping. It wasn't cold enough.""
- "There was three of them there."
- "And in the vppermoſt baſket there was of all maner of †bake-meats foꝛ Pharaoh,and the birds did eat them out of the baſket vpon my head."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂wes- Proto-Germanic *was Old English wæs Middle English was English was From Middle English was, from Old English wæs, from Proto-Germanic *was, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂we-h₂wós-e from *h₂wes- (“to reside”), whence also vestal. See also Scots was, West Frisian was (dated, wie is generally preferred today), Dutch was, Low German was, German war, Swedish var); also Kamkata-viri vos-, Sanskrit उवास (uvā́sa). The paradigm of “to be” has been since the time of Proto-Germanic a synthesis of three originally distinct verb stems. The infinitive form be and its derived forms been and being are from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to become”). The present-tense indicative forms am, is, and are are both derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₁es- (“to be”). Lastly, the past forms starting with w- such as was and were are from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wes- (“to reside”).