Aloud

How to spell aloud

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce aloud

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aloud mean?

1. adverbIn a voice that can be heard, rather than silently or in one's head.

Aloud in a sentence

• She read the letter aloud so everyone at the table could hear it.

• He counted the change aloud as he stacked the coins on the counter.

Where does aloud come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grew out of Old English, where the adjective 'hlud' meant simply 'loud' or 'making a strong sound'. During the late 1300s English speakers fused the old reduced preposition 'a-', meaning roughly 'in the state of' or 'on', onto an adjective to make an adverb, exactly the same pattern that produced 'asleep', 'ablaze' and 'afloat'. The result, 'aloud', literally meant 'in a loud manner' and quickly settled into the gentler modern sense of 'audibly' or 'out loud', as opposed to silently in one's head. The spelling keeps a single 'l', which is the main trap, because the word is pronounced identically to 'allowed', the past tense of 'allow', a completely unrelated French-derived word. Remembering that 'aloud' shares its core with plain 'loud' is the cleanest way to keep the two apart on the page.

How the word is built

• a- (Old English on/in: in the condition of)
• loud (from Old English hlud: making strong sound)

Words that sound like aloud

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

• allowed: Past tense of allow: gave permission for something, or did not forbid it.