Husky

How to spell husky

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce husky

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does husky mean?

1. adjectiveOf a voice, low, rough, and slightly hoarse.
2. adjectiveBig, strong, and solidly built.
3. nounA powerful northern dog bred to pull sleds, with a thick coat and often pale eyes.

Husky in a sentence

• adjective

  A heavy cold left her voice husky and faint.

• adjective

  The removal firm sent two husky workers to shift the piano.

• noun

  The husky pulled the loaded sled across the frozen lake.

• adjective

  He answered in a husky whisper across the dark room.

• adjective

  His husky frame made the small chair look fragile.

• noun

  Their pet husky shed its thick coat all over the sofa.

Where does husky come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The adjective husky began life as a plain combination of the noun husk, the dry papery covering on a seed or ear of corn, with the suffix -y, and husk itself reached English in the 1400s from a Dutch or Low German word related to huuskijn, a 'little house' or sheath that encloses a kernel. The earliest sense was simply 'dry like a husk', which is why a voice rough and dry in the throat came to be called husky. From the idea of corn full of husks, the word also drifted toward 'big and strongly built', describing a sturdy frame. The dog called a husky has a quite separate and surprising origin: it is a nineteenth-century shortening of an informal pronunciation of Eskimo, recorded among traders as Huskemaw or Husky, and was later attached to the northern sled dogs themselves. So one spelling covers two unrelated stories, but both have settled on the same simple husk + y shape, which keeps the word easy to write.

How the word is built

• husk (dry outer covering of a seed or grain)
• -y (adjective/noun suffix)