Mornings

How to spell mornings

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mornings

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mornings mean?

1. nounThe early parts of the day, between dawn and noon, considered as repeated or multiple occurrences.
2. adverbOn each morning; during the morning hours as a regular pattern.

Mornings in a sentence

• noun

  Cold winter mornings make it hard to leave a warm bed.

• adverb

  He works mornings at the warehouse and studies in the afternoon.

• noun

  She spends her mornings writing before the office opens.

• adverb

  The clinic sees patients mornings only, closing by midday.

Where does mornings come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word traces back to the Old English morgen, meaning the first part of the day or daybreak, which in turn came from a Germanic root shared with the Dutch morgen and the German Morgen. In Middle English the older form 'morwen' was gradually reshaped, and the ending -ing was attached on the model of 'evening', giving us 'morning' as the settled noun by the 1300s. The plural 'mornings' simply adds -s to refer to several such early periods, or to repeated daily occurrences. A useful spelling note is that 'morning' shares its sound with 'mourning' (grief), but only 'morning' carries the sense of daybreak, and they are unrelated in origin: 'mourning' descends from the Old English murnan, meaning to grieve. Keeping the early-day sense in mind separates the two homophones cleanly.

How the word is built

• morn (early day, from Old English morgen)
• -ing (noun-forming, denoting the period)
• -s (plural)