Porch

How to spell porch

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce porch

What does porch mean?

1. nounA covered structure or sheltered area forming the entrance to a building.

Porch in a sentence

• The delivery driver left the parcel on the front porch.

• They hung a hammock on the back porch to enjoy the summer evenings.

Where does porch come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word came into English in the early 1300s from the Old French 'porche', which itself descended from the Latin 'porticus', meaning a covered walkway or gallery of columns. That Latin noun was built on 'porta', the word for a gate or door, so the original idea was a sheltered structure standing at an entrance. The grand Roman 'porticus' could be a colonnade running along a public building, but in English the sense narrowed to the modest roofed area at the door of a house or church. The same 'porta' root survives in everyday words like 'portal' and 'port', and in the architectural term 'portico', which is really just the Latin form dressed up. Because the word is short and the spelling follows the sound closely, the only thing to remember is that it ends in the soft 'ch', not a 'tch'.

How the word is built

• porch (from Latin porticus: covered entrance), borrowed whole as a root word with no prefix or suffix