Hoover

How to spell hoover

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hoover

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hoover mean?

1. nounA vacuum cleaner, the appliance used to suck dust and dirt from floors.
2. verbTo clean a floor or surface using a vacuum cleaner.

Hoover in a sentence

• noun

  The old hoover kept clogging on the thick hallway rug.

• verb

  He likes to hoover the stairs every Saturday morning.

• noun

  She dragged the hoover out of the cupboard before the guests arrived.

• verb

  Please hoover the living room before the carpet fitters arrive.

Where does hoover come from?

Language of origin: Other

This word is an eponym, taken straight from a brand name. The Hoover Company was an American firm whose vacuum cleaners, named after the businessman William Henry Hoover who took over the venture in the early 1900s, dominated the British market so completely that the surname slid into ordinary speech as a common noun for any vacuum cleaner. By the 1920s and 1930s British speakers were saying 'the hoover' and even 'to hoover the carpet', turning a family name into both a noun and a verb. The surname Hoover itself is an Anglicised form of the German Huber, an old occupational name for a farmer who held a Hube, meaning a measured hide of land. Because it began life as a capitalised trademark, the spelling preserves the two o's of the name, and the lower-case generic form keeps exactly that shape. It remains chiefly a British and Commonwealth usage, where 'vacuum' is the more usual word in American English.

How the word is built

• Hoover (the proper surname and trademark) used generically; the double o spells the long 'oo' sound, no separate prefix or suffix