Aid

How to spell aid

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce aid

What does aid mean?

1. nounHelp or assistance given to someone in need.
2. verbTo help or assist someone in achieving something.
3. nounA device or resource that helps someone do something more easily.

Aid in a sentence

• noun

  The charity sent emergency aid to the flooded region.

• verb

  Good lighting can aid concentration during long study sessions.

• noun

  Her new hearing aid made the lecture much clearer.

• noun

  Foreign aid helped rebuild the country's hospitals.

• verb

  Stretching before a run may aid recovery afterwards.

• noun

  The teacher used a chart as a visual aid for the lesson.

Where does aid come from?

Language of origin: French

This word travelled into English from the Old French aide or aïe, meaning 'help' or 'assistance', which itself grew out of the Latin verb adiutare, 'to give help to'. That Latin verb was a strengthened form of adiuvare, built from ad, meaning 'towards', and iuvare, meaning 'to help or please'. English took it up in the 1400s, first as a verb for the act of helping and soon afterwards as a noun for the help itself. The same Latin root sits behind the personal noun 'aide', a helper or assistant, which is why the two spellings sound identical and are so often muddled; 'aide' keeps the French final 'e' for the person, while plain 'aid' is the help. Knowing that 'aid' is the bare assistance and 'aide' is the human assistant is the simplest way to keep them apart on the page.

How the word is built

• aid (from Latin adiutare, to help), a single root with no prefix or suffix

Words that sound like aid

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• aide: A person who acts as an assistant, especially to a senior official or leader.