He'll

How to spell he'll

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce he'll

What does he'll mean?

1. pronounA contraction of 'he will' or 'he shall', used to state what a male person is going to do.

He'll in a sentence

• He'll call you back as soon as the meeting ends.

• If the train is late again, he'll ask for a refund.

Where does he'll come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a contraction of the pronoun 'he' joined to the auxiliary verb 'will' (or occasionally 'shall'). The pronoun 'he' descends from the Old English 'he', a native Germanic word that has named the male person since before the year 900. 'Will' comes from the Old English 'willan', meaning 'to wish, to want, to intend', which is why the future tense in English originally carried a flavour of intention rather than pure prediction. The fused, apostrophised form became common in informal and spoken English from around the seventeenth century, with the apostrophe standing in for the missing letters 'wi' of 'will'. The spelling trap is that the result sounds exactly like 'heel' (the back of the foot) and 'heal' (to make well), so the meaning must do the disambiguating work that the ear cannot.

How the word is built

• he (pronoun)
• 'll (contracted will/shall, apostrophe marks the dropped letters of 'will')

Words that sound like he'll

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• heal: To become healthy again, or to make a wound, illness, or injury better.
• heel: The rounded back part of the human foot, below the ankle.