Knew

How to spell knew

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce knew

What does knew mean?

1. verbPast tense of 'know': had knowledge of, or was acquainted with, something or someone.

Knew in a sentence

• She knew the answer before the teacher finished asking.

• He knew his old colleague from their first job together.

Where does knew come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the past tense of 'know', which descends from the Old English verb cnāwan, meaning 'to recognise, to perceive, or to be acquainted with'. That verb belonged to the wide Germanic and Indo-European family built on a root that meant 'to know' or 'to recognise', the same ancient root that also gives us 'can', 'cunning', and the Latin-derived 'recognise'. 'Knew' is a strong-verb past form, where the tense was originally shown by changing the vowel inside the word rather than by adding an ending, much as 'grow' becomes 'grew'. The 'k' at the front was once fully pronounced in Old and Middle English, but speakers stopped sounding it around the 1600s, leaving the silent 'kn-' spelling that traps writers today. That lost sound is exactly why 'knew' is now a perfect homophone of 'new', so the silent letters are the whole spelling puzzle.

How the word is built

• kn- (Old English cnāwan: to know)
• past-tense vowel change to 'knew' (strong verb ablaut)

Words that sound like knew

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• new: Recently made, acquired, or come into existence; not old or previously known.