Hush

How to spell hush

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hush

What does hush mean?

1. verbTo make someone or something become quiet or silent.
2. nounA period of calm or silence.
3. interjectionA call for silence or calm.

Hush in a sentence

• verb

  She tried to hush the crying baby before the meeting started.

• noun

  A sudden hush fell over the courtroom as the verdict was read.

• interjection

  Hush now, the baby has finally fallen asleep in the next room.

• verb

  The manager wanted to hush the rumour before it spread further.

• noun

  There was an awkward hush after his blunt remark.

Where does hush come from?

Language of origin: Other

Hush began life as an imitation of the soft 'shh' sound people make when they want silence. In Middle English the form was 'huisht' or 'husht', and speakers seem to have treated that final '-t' as a past-tense or past-participle ending, as if someone had been 'husht'. Once they assumed a verb behind it, they trimmed the word back to the bare 'hush' that we use today, a process linguists call back-formation. Because it is echoic, copying a real sound rather than descending from an older root word, its history is short and a little speculative. Its closest companions are the equally imitative 'shush' and 'hist', and that sound-based origin is exactly why the spelling is so plain and regular.

How the word is built

• hush (imitative root suggesting the 'shh' sound of calling for quiet)