Holly

How to spell holly

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce holly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does holly mean?

1. nounAn evergreen tree or shrub with glossy spiny leaves and bright red berries, often used in winter decoration.

Holly in a sentence

• A wreath of holly hung on the front door all December.

• The gardener planted a row of holly along the fence for year-round greenery.

Where does holly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Holly descends from the Old English holegn or holen, the native Anglo-Saxon name for the spiny evergreen tree. It belongs to a wide Germanic family of related words, including the Old High German hulis and the Dutch hulst, all naming the same prickly plant. Over the medieval centuries the longer holegn was worn down in speech, losing its final consonant and settling into the short, two-syllable holly we use today. Because the tree keeps its glossy leaves and bright red berries through winter, it became firmly tied to midwinter and later to Christmas decoration, which is how most adults now meet the word. The trap in spelling is purely a sound trap: holly is an exact homophone of the unrelated holy and wholly, yet it carries the doubled l and the y ending that mark it as the plant.

How the word is built

• holl- (from Old English holegn: the holly tree)
• -y (vowel ending preserved from the older form)