Eight

How to spell eight

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce eight

What does eight mean?

1. nounThe cardinal number equal to seven plus one, written 8.

Eight in a sentence

• The meeting starts at eight.

• I've invited eight people to dinner.

Where does eight come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from Old English eahta, the native Anglo-Saxon name for the number that follows seven. It traces back to the Proto-Germanic ahto, which also gave German acht and Dutch acht, and beyond that to the Proto-Indo-European root okto, the same ancestor seen in Latin octo and Greek okto (the source of 'October', once the eighth month, and 'octopus'). The 'gh' in the modern spelling once stood for a real throaty consonant sound that Anglo-Saxon and Middle English speakers actually pronounced; over the centuries that sound faded away, but scribes kept the letters, which is why we now write a silent 'gh'. The 'ei' vowel also catches people, since it breaks the usual 'i before e' habit, making 'eight' a small but persistent spelling trap.

How the word is built

• eight (whole word from Old English eahta; no separable affixes, the silent 'gh' is a frozen spelling of a lost consonant)

Words that sound like eight

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• ate: The past tense of eat: consumed food at some earlier time.