Band

How to spell band

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce band

What does band mean?

1. nounA group of musicians who perform together.
2. nounA flat strip or loop of material used to bind, fasten, or decorate.
3. nounA defined range, such as a span of radio frequencies or a category of values.
4. verbTo form or unite into a group for a shared purpose.

Band in a sentence

• noun

  The local band played covers at the wedding reception.

• noun

  She slipped a rubber band around the rolled documents.

• noun

  The radio scanner picked up traffic on the emergency band.

• verb

  The residents agreed to band together against the new development.

• noun

  He joined a jazz band during his university years.

• noun

  The watch came with a brown leather band.

Where does band come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Band actually arrives in English from two related directions, both tracing back to a Germanic root meaning 'to bind'. The sense of a strip, loop, or fastening came through Old French 'bande', a relative of the same binding idea, while the sense of a fixed group of people came from a parallel Germanic source meaning a troop bound together under one banner. The musical sense grew naturally out of that idea of a band of people, since a band is simply a company of players bound to a common purpose. Old Norse 'band' and modern German 'Band' (a ribbon or tie) are close cousins, which is why so many meanings cluster around the notion of binding or being bound. The word is short and phonetically regular, so its only real spelling trap is the homophone 'banned', the past tense of 'ban', which sounds identical but carries a doubled n.

How the word is built

• band (single root, from a Germanic word for something that ties or binds)

Words that sound like band

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

• banned: Past tense of 'ban': officially forbade or prohibited something.