Greets

How to spell greets

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce greets

What does greets mean?

1. verbWelcomes or acknowledges someone with words or a gesture on meeting them.

Greets in a sentence

• The receptionist greets every visitor with a warm smile.

• He always greets his neighbours when he collects the morning paper.

Where does greets come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present-tense third-person form of the verb 'greet', which descends from the Old English gretan, meaning 'to approach, to touch, to address'. The Germanic root carried a sense of going up to someone and making contact, whether physically or in speech, and related forms survive in Dutch groeten and German grüßen, both meaning 'to greet'. Over the medieval period the English sense narrowed to the friendly act of welcoming or saluting a person on meeting them. The spelling kept its double 'e' from the long vowel of the older form, and the modern word simply adds an '-s' for the he, she, or it ending. Interestingly, an unrelated Scots and northern English verb 'greet' meaning 'to weep' comes from a different Old English root, but it is the welcoming sense that gave us the everyday modern word.

How the word is built

• greet (from Old English gretan: to approach, address)
• -s (third-person singular present)