Stroke

How to spell stroke

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stroke

What does stroke mean?

1. verbTo move the hand gently and repeatedly over a surface, often to soothe.
2. nounA sudden interruption of blood flow to the brain, causing loss of function.
3. nounA single mark, action, or movement, such as of a pen, brush, or swimmer.

Stroke in a sentence

• verb

  She likes to stroke the cat until it falls asleep.

• noun

  A sudden stroke left her unable to speak for several days.

• noun

  The artist finished the portrait with one confident stroke of the brush.

• verb

  He would stroke his beard whenever he was deep in thought.

• noun

  High blood pressure greatly raises the risk of a stroke.

• noun

  His favourite swimming stroke is the butterfly.

Where does stroke come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Stroke is a native English word with two closely related strands of meaning that grew from the same Germanic root. The verb meaning 'to pass the hand gently over something' comes from the Old English strācian, meaning 'to rub lightly', which is in turn linked to strīcan, 'to move over a surface', the ancestor of the modern word 'strike'. The noun sense of a single movement or blow developed alongside this and shares that same family, so a brush stroke, a swimmer's stroke, and the act of stroking a cat all trace back to the idea of a hand or implement passing across a surface. The medical sense, a sudden interruption of blood to the brain, appeared in English around the 1500s, originally describing it as a sudden 'stroke of God's hand'. The spelling keeps the long vowel with a silent final 'e', a regular English pattern (like 'broke' and 'smoke'), which is why the word causes few problems despite its many meanings.

How the word is built

• strāc/strīcan (Old English: to rub, to pass over lightly)
• silent -e (spelling of the long 'oh' vowel)