Fours

How to spell fours

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce fours

What does fours mean?

1. nounMore than one instance of the number four, or groups or sets containing four members each.
2. nounBoundary shots in cricket that each score four runs when the ball reaches the edge of the field along the ground.

Fours in a sentence

• The toddler crawled around the room on all fours.

• The opening batsman hit three quick fours off the first over.

• Please arrange the chairs into fours for the workshop tables.

• The commentator noted that all her runs came from fours rather than sixes.

Where does fours come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural of 'four', which comes from the Old English 'feower', meaning the number four. That word traces back to the Proto-Germanic 'fedwor', a relative of the Dutch 'vier' and the German 'vier', and ultimately to the Proto-Indo-European root 'kwetwer', the same ancient source that gave Latin 'quattuor' (seen in 'quarter' and 'quadrangle') and Greek 'tessares'. The shift from that 'kw' sound to the English 'f' is a regular Germanic sound change, which is why the English word looks so different from its Latin cousins. The plural simply adds the everyday English '-s', and the spelling stays straightforward; the only trap is the silent 'u' inherited from the Old English form. Adding '-s' to the number is common when speaking of golf clubs, rowing crews, cricket shots, or groups of four.

How the word is built

• four (the number 4)
• -s (plural)