without
/wɪθˈaʊt/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.69 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
prep
Not having, containing, characteristic of, etc.
noun
Example Sentences
- "And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to nothing, still lived on, as hopes will."
- "Strange silence here: without, the sounding street Heralds the world's swift passage to the fire"
- "I knew that someone had entered the house cautiously from without."
- "The feeling seemed to come not from without, but from within each body, as though every person had become a vibrating string."
- "Brainiac: This earthquake is quite literally worldwide. Alex Danvers: But the seismic activity [isn't] coming from within the planet, it's coming from without."
- "Being from a large, poor family, he learned to live without."
Etymology
From Middle English withoute, withouten, from Old English wiþūtan (literally “against the outside of”). By surface analysis, with- + out. Compare Dutch buiten (“outside of, without”), Danish uden (“without”), Swedish utan (“without”), Norwegian uten (“without”). Superseded non-native Middle English sauns, sans (“without”), from Old French sans, sanz, senz (“without”). Compare typologically Proto-Slavic *bez (“without”) (<+ Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰs (“out”)).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /wɪθˈaʊt/
- British English: /wɪðˈaʊt/