Lots

How to spell lots

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce lots

What does lots mean?

1. nounA large number or amount of something.
2. nounSeparate groups of items offered for sale, especially at an auction.

Lots in a sentence

• There were lots of people waiting outside the office.

• The catalogue listed thirty lots of antique furniture.

• She has lots of experience in project management.

• The first three lots sold for well above the estimate.

Where does lots come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English 'hlot', meaning an object such as a chip of wood, a pebble, or a marked token that was drawn to decide a share or settle a question by chance. From that practice of 'casting lots' the noun came to mean the share or portion a person received, and later any single item or batch, such as a parcel of land or a group of goods sold together at auction. The informal sense of 'lots' as 'a great many' or 'a great deal' developed in English by the early nineteenth century, the idea being that a large share amounts to a large quantity. The root is firmly Germanic and has close cousins in Dutch 'lot' and German 'Los', both still tied to drawing for chance and fortune. Because the spelling simply adds an 's' to the short, regular base 'lot', it holds no real trap beyond remembering it is one word with no apostrophe.

How the word is built

• lot (a portion, a set)
• -s (plural / quantity marker)