Goals

How to spell goals

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce goals

What does goals mean?

1. nounThe aims or results that a person or organisation is trying to achieve.
2. nounPoints scored by sending a ball or puck into the marked target in a game.

Goals in a sentence

• The team set clear goals for the next quarter.

• She scored three goals in the second half.

• Writing down your goals makes them easier to track.

• The match ended with no goals on either side.

Where does goals come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The singular goal first appears in English in the early 1500s, though its earlier history is genuinely murky. The most widely accepted suggestion links it to a Middle English word 'gol', meaning a boundary or limit, which may in turn descend from an unrecorded Old English term related to the verb 'gælan', meaning 'to hinder' or 'to impede', the idea being a marker that one races toward or that holds a line. From the literal sense of a finishing point in a race, the meaning broadened in two directions: the physical posts that mark where a ball must be sent in sport, and the figurative target a person aims to reach in life or work. The plural 'goals' simply adds the regular English -s ending. Because the origin is uncertain, the spelling has no helpful root to lean on, but the steady 'oa' vowel pairing matches everyday words like 'coal' and 'foal'.

How the word is built

• goal (an aim or the scoring target)
• -s (plural marker)