Kisses

How to spell kisses

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce kisses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does kisses mean?

1. nounMore than one touch of the lips given as a sign of affection or greeting.
2. verbTouches someone or something with the lips, as a sign of affection.

Kisses in a sentence

• noun

  She signed the birthday card with a row of little kisses.

• verb

  Every morning she kisses her daughter goodbye at the school gate.

• noun

  The toddler blew kisses to his grandparents as the train pulled away.

• verb

  He always kisses the photograph of his late father before bed.

Where does kisses come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word goes back to the Old English noun 'coss' and the matching verb 'cyssan', both meaning to touch with the lips as a sign of affection or greeting. These came from a common Germanic root, seen in the Dutch 'kus' and the German 'Kuss', and many scholars suspect the word began as an imitation of the soft sound the gesture makes. Over the centuries the spelling shifted from 'coss' toward the modern 'kiss', and the plural and present-tense form simply add the regular '-es' ending used after a hissing 's' sound. The doubled 's' in the base word is the only mild trap, since adults occasionally pause over whether one 's' or two is correct. The everyday warmth of the word has kept it remarkably stable in both meaning and use for well over a thousand years.

How the word is built

• kiss (from Old English coss/cyssan, a touch with the lips)
• -es (plural noun / third-person verb suffix)