Listen
verbTo give attention to a sound or to what someone is saying.
How to spell listen
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce listen
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does listen mean?
- verbTo give attention to a sound or to what someone is saying.
Listen in a sentence
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Please listen carefully to the safety briefing before takeoff.
-
Listen to the birds at dawn.
Where does listen come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
The word comes from the Old English verb hlysnan, which meant 'to pay attention' or 'to hear with care', and it traces back to a Germanic and ultimately Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to hear', the same family that gave us the now-archaic word 'list' in the sense of 'to be pleased' and the noun 'loud'. In Middle English the form appeared as listnen or lustnen, and over time it blended with a related older verb hlystan, 'to listen', sharpening into the modern shape. The puzzling silent t crept into the spelling later by association with words like 'glisten' and 'hasten', even though it was never sounded, which is exactly the trap modern writers fall into when they hear LISS-en but must write that hidden t. The same ancient hearing root sits inside 'loud' and the German verb lauschen, 'to eavesdrop'. By the 1500s the spelling with t had settled, leaving us a common everyday word whose only real difficulty is the letter you cannot hear.
How the word is built
- listen (from Old English hlysnan: to pay attention; the t is silent and was not in the original spelling)
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