Link Centre Dictionary

why

UK/waɪ̯/ US/waɪ̯/ very common literary
adverb (1) noun (1)

adverb

1.

question word; what is the reason (`how come'' is a nonstandard variant)

  • “why are you here?”
  • “how come he got an ice cream cone but I didn”
Synonyms

noun

1.

the cause or intention underlying an action or situation, especially in the phrase `the whys and wherefores''

Synonyms

Origin

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.

Related words

Broader terms

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.