Bells

How to spell bells

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bells

What does bells mean?

1. nounHollow metal instruments that ring when struck or shaken.

Bells in a sentence

• The church bells rang out across the village at noon.

• Sleigh bells were stitched onto the leather harness.

Where does bells come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is the plural of 'bell', which comes from the Old English 'belle', the name for the familiar hollow metal instrument that rings when struck. The Old English form is thought to be related to the verb 'bellan', meaning 'to bellow' or 'to roar loudly', linking the object to the loud sound it makes. The same root survives in Dutch 'bel' and in the older Germanic family of words for noisy crying out. From its earliest recorded use the word kept its simple, native spelling, and the plural was formed in the ordinary way by adding -s. Because it is a short, phonetically regular Anglo-Saxon word, the spelling has changed very little over more than a thousand years.

How the word is built

• bell (Old English belle: a hollow sounding instrument)
• -s (plural)