Halves

How to spell halves

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce halves

What does halves mean?

1. nounMore than one half; the two equal or roughly equal parts into which something is divided.

Halves in a sentence

• She cut the sandwiches into neat halves for the children.

• The two halves of the report were written by different colleagues.

Where does halves come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural of 'half', which descends from the Old English 'healf', meaning a side or a part, and ultimately from a Germanic root shared with the Dutch 'half' and the German 'halb'. In the earliest sense it referred to one of the two sides of something rather than strictly a fraction, so a battle could be fought on the 'left half'. English has long shifted a final 'f' sound to a 'v' when adding a plural ending, which is why we say 'halves', 'wolves', and 'knives' rather than 'halfs' or 'knifes'. That regular sound change is the whole spelling trap: the singular ends in 'lf' but the plural drops to '-lves'. The silent 'l', kept from the Old English spelling even though it is no longer pronounced, makes the word look stranger than it sounds.

How the word is built

• halve (from Old English healf)
• -s (plural; the f of half shifts to v before the ending)