From

How to spell from

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce from

What does from mean?

1. prepositionIndicating the source, origin, or starting point of something.

From in a sentence

• A letter arrived from Paris.

• My grandfather was from a small village.

Where does from come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is one of the oldest words in English, inherited directly from Old English 'from' or 'fram', which meant 'forward', 'away from', or 'since'. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic form 'fram', related to ideas of moving forward or onward, and shares deep roots with similar words in the other Germanic languages, such as Old Norse 'fra'. The very same ancestral sense of 'forward motion' survives faintly in the word 'frame', which originally meant something pushed forward into shape. Over the centuries the older meanings of 'onward' faded, and the word settled into its modern job of marking a source, origin, or starting point. Because it has always been spelled with a simple short vowel and a single 'o', it carries no real trap and remains as plain in writing today as it was a thousand years ago.

How the word is built

• from (a single Old English root; not built from a prefix and suffix)