Honors

How to spell honors

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce honors

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does honors mean?

1. verbTreats with great respect, or fulfils an obligation or agreement.
2. nounMarks of distinction, awards, or an advanced academic course of study.

Honors in a sentence

• verb

  The company always honors its warranty on faulty parts.

• noun

  He graduated with honors from the state university.

• verb

  She honors every promise she makes to her team.

• noun

  The museum displayed the military honors awarded to the veterans.

Where does honors come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the American spelling of a word that travelled into English from the Latin honor (also written honos), which meant esteem, public dignity, or a mark of respect awarded to a person. English picked it up in the 1200s through Old French honor or honour, where it already carried both the abstract idea of high regard and the concrete sense of titles and tokens of distinction. For centuries British and American writers alike spelled it with the French-style -our ending, but Noah Webster's nineteenth-century dictionaries pushed American usage toward the leaner Latin-based -or, giving us honor and its inflected form honors. The same Latin root sits inside familiar relatives such as honest, honorary, and honorific. The spelling trap here is not the -or ending itself but the silent opening h and the unstressed second syllable, which can tempt a writer toward an - er ending.

How the word is built

• honor (from Latin honor: high regard, dignity)
• -s (plural noun / third-person singular verb suffix)

British and American spelling

Honors is the American spelling. British English spells it honours.