Await
verbTo wait for something or someone, or to be in store for a person.
How to spell await
5 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce await
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does await mean?
- verbTo wait for something or someone, or to be in store for a person.
Await in a sentence
-
We await the final results of the audit before signing off.
-
A long queue at passport control seemed to await every arriving passenger.
Where does await come from?
Language of origin: French
This verb came into English in the early 1300s from Old North French awaitier, which meant 'to watch, lie in wait for, or expect'. That form was built from the prefix a-, meaning 'to' or 'towards', joined to waitier, 'to watch or guard'. The root itself traces back to a Germanic word for keeping watch, the same source that gives us the ordinary verb 'wait'. Early on the word carried a faintly hostile sense of lying in ambush, but over the centuries it softened into the calmer modern meaning of simply waiting for something to arrive or happen. Because it is just the prefix a- fused onto 'wait', the single spelling trap is remembering that it is one word with one t, not the two-word phrase 'a wait'.
How the word is built
- a- (to, towards)
- wait (to watch, stay for)
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