Herd

How to spell herd

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce herd

What does herd mean?

1. nounA large group of animals, especially cattle or other livestock, kept or living together.
2. verbTo gather, drive, or move a group of animals or people together.

Herd in a sentence

• noun

  The farmer drove the entire herd of cattle into the lower field.

• verb

  The staff had to herd the visitors toward the emergency exits.

• noun

  A herd of wild elephants crossed the dusty road at dawn.

• verb

  Two dogs worked together to herd the sheep down the hillside.

Where does herd come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from Old English heord, meaning a group of domestic animals kept together, and it has cousins across the Germanic languages, including the German Herde and the Dutch kudde. The deeper root is a Proto-Germanic form meaning a flock or troop, ultimately tracing back to an Indo-European root suggesting a row or crowd of living things. The verb sense, to gather or drive animals together, grew naturally out of the noun and was well established by the Middle Ages. Over time the word stretched beyond livestock to describe any large mass of people moving as one, sometimes with a faintly disapproving tone, as in 'the herd'. Its main spelling trap is that it sounds exactly like 'heard', the past tense of 'hear', so the two are constantly swapped; remembering that this 'herd' is the one with no extra 'a', built straight on the animal word, helps keep them apart.

How the word is built

• herd (Old English heord: a group of domestic animals); no affixes

Words that sound like herd

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

• heard: The past tense of hear: perceived a sound, or received information.