Holy

How to spell holy

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce holy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does holy mean?

1. adjectiveRegarded as sacred, divine, or dedicated to religious worship.

Holy in a sentence

• The priest sprinkled holy water over the congregation.

• Pilgrims travel for weeks to reach the holy city.

Where does holy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English hālig, meaning 'sacred' or 'consecrated', which itself grew from the same Germanic root as hāl, the ancestor of our modern words 'whole', 'hale', and 'heal'. That kinship is telling: to early Germanic speakers the ideas of being unbroken, healthy, and sacred were bound together, since something holy was something kept whole and inviolate. The word is found across the old Germanic languages, with relatives such as the Dutch heilig and the German heilig. Over the centuries the spelling shrank from hālig to the compact 'holy' we use today, while its meaning settled firmly on the religious sense of divine or set apart for worship. The shared ancestry with 'whole' is exactly why 'holy', 'wholly', and 'holey' are so easily muddled on the page, even though only 'holy' carries the sense of the sacred.

How the word is built

• hol- (from Old English hālig: sacred, consecrated)
• -y (adjective suffix)

Words that sound like holy

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

• wholly: Completely, entirely, or to the full extent.