Chose

How to spell chose

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce chose

What does chose mean?

1. verbThe past tense of 'choose': to have selected something from a number of options.

Chose in a sentence

• After months of searching, she finally chose the apartment near the station.

• He chose the cheaper flight to save money for the trip.

Where does chose come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of 'choose', which descends from the Old English verb ceosan, meaning 'to choose, to taste, or to test'. That verb belonged to a strong Germanic class whose past tense forms shifted the vowel, which is exactly why we still say 'choose' in the present but 'chose' in the past, just as we say 'freeze' and 'froze'. The Old English root traces back to a Proto-Germanic form related to Dutch kiezen and German kiesen, all carrying the sense of picking or selecting. An older shade of meaning, 'to taste' or 'to try', survives in the related idea of being 'choosy', someone who samples carefully before settling. The single 's' and the long 'o' sound make 'chose' easy to muddle with the present-tense 'choose', which doubles the vowel, and that contrast is the main thing to fix in memory.

How the word is built

• chose (past tense of 'choose', from Old English ceosan 'to choose')