Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

why

/waɪ̯/ adverb, noun, interjection, verb

Also a form of wye

Forms whys why's whies whying whyed whied

  1. adverb Introducing a complete question. “Why is the sky blue?”
  2. adverb With a negative, used rhetorically to make a suggestion.
  3. adverb Introducing a verb phrase (bare infinitive clause). “Why spend money on something you already get for free?”
  4. adverb Introducing a noun or other phrase. “Why him? Why not someone taller?”
  5. adverb (relative) For which cause, reason, or purpose. “That's the reason why I did that.”
  6. adverb (fused relative) The cause, reason, or purpose for which. “That is why the sky is blue.”
  7. noun Reason. “A good article will cover the who, the what, the when, the where, the why and the how.”
  8. interjection (dated or literary) An exclamation used to express pleasant or unpleasant mild surprise, indignation, or impatience. “Why, that’s ridiculous!”
  9. verb (intransitive, transitive) To ask (someone) the question "why?".
  10. noun (Yorkshire, obsolete) A young heifer.

Synonyms

how come to what end what for why so for why wherefore

Etymology

From Middle English why, from Old English hwȳ (“why”), from Proto-Germanic *hwī (“by what, how”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷey, instrumental case of *kʷís (“who”), *kʷid (“what”).
Cognate with Old Saxon hwī (“why”), hwiu (“how; why”), Middle High German wiu (“how, why”), archaic Danish and Norwegian Bokmål hvi (“why”), Norwegian Nynorsk kvi (“why”), Swedish vi (“why”), Faroese and Icelandic hví (“why”), Latin quī (“why”), Doric Greek πεῖ (peî, “where”), Ukrainian чи (čy, “if”), Polish czy, Czech či (“or”), Serbo-Croatian či (“if”). Compare Old English þȳ (“because, since, on that account, therefore, then”, literally “by that, for that”). See thy.

A variant of quey.

Webster’s 1913

  1. adverb For what cause, reason, or purpose; on what account; wherefore; --used interrogatively. See the Note under What, pron., 1.
  2. adverb For which; on account of which; --used relatively.
  3. noun A young heifer. [Prov. Eng.] Grose.

Etymology [OE. whi, why, AS. hwi, hw, instrumental case of hwa, hwæt; akin to Icel. hvi why, Dan. & Sw. hvi; cf. Goth. hw. Who.]

Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “why”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details

Sanskrit

Sanskrit dictionary entries whose meaning includes “why” (best matches first).

All 14 Sanskrit matches →