Comb

How to spell comb

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce comb

What does comb mean?

1. nounA flat tool with a row of narrow teeth used to arrange or smooth hair; also, to search a place or thing thoroughly.

Comb in a sentence

• She pulled a comb through her tangled hair.

• Use a wide-toothed comb on wet hair.

Where does comb come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English camb, which named a toothed tool for arranging hair and shared roots across the older Germanic languages, where related forms described anything notched with a row of teeth. The same ancient sense of a jagged or toothed edge survives in surprising places: the fleshy crest on a rooster's head is called a comb, and so is the wax structure that bees build, the honeycomb, both named for their ridged, toothlike pattern. Over time the vowel shifted in pronunciation while the spelling held on to its old shape, which is exactly why the silent b at the end now traps writers. That final b was once sounded in the Germanic ancestor but fell silent in English speech, leaving the letter stranded on the page. Because the word looks like it should rhyme with 'bomb' or 'tomb' yet does neither, the spelling has to be learned by memory.

How the word is built

• comb (single Old English root camb: toothed implement; no prefix or suffix)