Bath

How to spell bath

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bath

What does bath mean?

1. nounA large container that you fill with water to wash your whole body, or the act of washing in it.
2. verbTo wash someone, especially a child, in a bath.

Bath in a sentence

• noun

  She ran a hot bath after the long shift.

• verb

  He likes to bath the baby while his partner cooks dinner.

• noun

  The children take a bath before bed every night.

• verb

  The nurses bath patients who cannot wash themselves.

Where does bath come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Bath is a native English word, descending directly from the Old English 'bæth', which referred both to the act of washing the body in water and to the water or vessel used for it. It belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close relatives such as the German 'Bad' and the Dutch 'bad', all going back to a Proto-Germanic root linked to the idea of warming, since early bathing meant immersion in heated water. The related verb 'to bathe' kept a long vowel and a final 'e', while the noun 'bath' stayed short, which is why the two look and sound different today. The English city of Bath takes its name from the famous Roman baths built there over its hot springs. Because the word is so short and phonetically regular, its only real spelling point is the final 'th' digraph, which represents a single sound.

How the word is built

• bath (single Old English root, no affixes)