Deaf

How to spell deaf

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce deaf

What does deaf mean?

1. adjectiveLacking all or part of the power to hear; also, figuratively, unwilling to listen or pay attention.

Deaf in a sentence

• The accident in his youth left him completely deaf in one ear.

• The charity provides interpreters for deaf employees at company meetings.

Where does deaf come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word that traces straight back to the Old English dēaf, meaning 'lacking the power to hear'. It belongs to a wide Germanic family: Dutch has doof and German has taub, all descended from a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word daubaz, which carried the broad sense of 'dull' or 'blunted', the idea being that a sense had been deadened. That older notion of dullness is why related words in other Germanic tongues shaded toward meanings like 'numb' or 'faded'. The spelling trap is the 'ea' pair, which here is pronounced as a short 'e' (as in 'dead' and 'head') rather than the long 'ee' that 'ea' often signals, a quirk that survives from older vowel pronunciations. The figurative sense of being 'deaf to' a request, meaning unwilling to listen, has been in steady use for centuries.

How the word is built

• deaf (Old English dēaf: lacking the power to hear); single root, no affixes