Hem

How to spell hem

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hem

What does hem mean?

1. nounThe edge of a piece of cloth or a garment that is turned under and sewn to prevent fraying.
2. verbTo turn under and sew the edge of a piece of cloth.
3. verbTo surround or confine something so that movement is restricted, usually followed by 'in'.

Hem in a sentence

• noun

  The hem of the dress had come loose at the back.

• verb

  The tailor will hem the curtains so they hang at the right length.

• verb

  Tall buildings hem in the small courtyard on every side.

• noun

  She shortened the trousers by raising the hem two centimetres.

• verb

  She learned to hem a skirt by hand during the class.

• verb

  The steep cliffs hem the village against the sea.

Where does hem come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from Old English hemm, which meant a border or the edge of a piece of cloth, and it is closely related to similar words in the older Germanic languages that all carried the idea of a margin or enclosure. The underlying sense was something that bounds or hems something in, so the cloth meaning and the surrounding meaning grew from the same root idea of a confining edge. By the late medieval period it was firmly attached to the folded and stitched border of a garment, and the verb 'to hem' developed naturally from the noun. The separate exclamation 'hem', the little throat-clearing noise of hesitation, is an imitative word: it simply copies the sound, which is why it ended up spelled the same short way. Because the word is so old, native, and brief, its spelling has stayed remarkably stable for centuries.

How the word is built

• hem (from Old English hemm: a border or edge)