Shoulders

How to spell shoulders

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shoulders

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shoulders mean?

1. nounThe two parts of the body where each arm joins the trunk.
2. verbTakes on or carries a burden or responsibility.

Shoulders in a sentence

• noun

  The heavy backpack left red marks on her shoulders.

• verb

  She always shoulders the blame when a project runs late.

• noun

  Years of desk work left tension in his shoulders and neck.

• verb

  One manager shoulders most of the workload for the whole team.

Where does shoulders come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word goes back to the Old English sculdor, the name for the joint where the arm meets the trunk of the body. It has close relatives across the Germanic family, including the Dutch schouder and the German Schulter, all pointing to a shared ancestral word for that part of the body, though the deeper origin before then is not clearly known. From a very early date English also used the word figuratively for bearing burdens, since loads were literally carried on the shoulders, which is how the verb sense of taking on responsibility developed. The modern spelling keeps the silent stretch in the middle, where 'oul' sounds simply like the 'ol' in 'older'; that quiet 'u' is the main trap, since the word is pronounced as if it were 'sholder'. The final -s is just the ordinary plural or verb ending added to shoulder.

How the word is built

• shoulder (from Old English sculdor: the joint of the arm)
• -s (plural/third-person ending)