Hoard

How to spell hoard

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hoard

What does hoard mean?

1. verbTo accumulate and store away a large supply of something, often secretly or to excess.
2. nounA stock or store of something valuable that has been amassed and hidden away.

Hoard in a sentence

• verb

  During the shortage, some shoppers began to hoard tins of food.

• noun

  The builders uncovered a hoard of Roman coins beneath the old floor.

• verb

  He tends to hoard old receipts and never throws any of them out.

• noun

  She kept a secret hoard of chocolate in the back of the cupboard.

Where does hoard come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends directly from the Old English noun 'hord', which meant a treasure or a secret store of valuables kept safely hidden away. It belongs to the native Germanic layer of English, with close relatives such as Old High German 'hort' and Gothic 'huzd', all carrying the idea of something concealed and guarded. The earliest sense was firmly about precious things: gold, coins, and treasures buried for safekeeping, an image familiar from Anglo-Saxon poetry like Beowulf, where a dragon broods over its hoard. Over time the meaning broadened from buried treasure to any stockpile a person quietly amasses, whether food, supplies, or odds and ends. The spelling trap is its identical-sounding cousin 'horde', meaning a large crowd, which arrived much later from a Turkic and Mongol word; remembering that 'hoard' is the older, treasure-storing word helps keep the two apart.

How the word is built

• hoard (from Old English hord: treasure, secret store), used as both noun and verb

Words that sound like hoard

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

• horde: A large, often disorderly group of people moving or gathering together.