Hear

How to spell hear

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hear

What does hear mean?

1. verbTo perceive sound through the ear, or to be told or made aware of something.

Hear in a sentence

• With the music so loud, she could barely hear the announcement.

• Older relatives often cannot hear high-pitched voices clearly.

Where does hear come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descending from the Old English verb hieran or heran, which meant to perceive sound through the ear and also to listen to or obey. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic root hauzijan, the same source that gave German hoeren and Dutch horen, all carrying the sense of catching sound. Scholars connect the root to an even older idea of keen perception, which is why hearing and obeying were once almost the same notion, as in to give someone a hearing or to heed them. The spelling keeps the ear hidden inside the word: hear literally contains 'ear', a handy reminder that you hear with your ear, not with the place word 'here'. That overlap in sound with 'here' is exactly the trap, since the two words are pronounced identically but mean entirely different things.

How the word is built

• hear (from Old English hieran: to perceive sound with the ear); a single native root with no prefix or suffix

Words that sound like hear

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

• here: In, at, or to this place or position.