Pillow

How to spell pillow

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pillow

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pillow mean?

1. nounA soft cushion, usually filled with feathers or foam, used to support the head while sleeping or resting.

Pillow in a sentence

• She fluffed the pillow before settling down to sleep.

• The hotel offered a firm or a soft pillow for each guest.

Where does pillow come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Pillow comes from the Old English pyle (also written pylu), the everyday word for a soft cushion placed under the head in bed. That word was borrowed from the Latin pulvinus, meaning a cushion or bolster, an early loan that entered the Germanic languages well before the Norman Conquest. Over the centuries the pronunciation shifted and the spelling drifted through forms like pilwe and pilowe in Middle English before settling into the modern pillow. The closing -ow, which often trips writers because it sounds like a simple long 'o', is the survivor of that older two-syllable ending. The doubled l is the other quiet trap, since the single-l sound gives no hint that two are needed.

How the word is built

• pillow (from Old English pyle, a cushion for the head)
• the -ow spelling that developed from the older vowel ending