Than

How to spell than

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce than

What does than mean?

1. conjunctionA word used to introduce the second element in a comparison of inequality or preference.

Than in a sentence

• She is taller than her brother.

• I'd rather walk than drive in this weather.

• Knowledge is better than ignorance.

• He's older than he looks.

• There's nothing more frustrating than losing your keys.

Where does than come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from Old English thanne, thonne, or thaenne, which was originally the same word as 'then'. In early English 'then' and 'than' were not distinguished; the single form covered both the idea of time ('at that time') and the idea of comparison ('compared with that'). Over the centuries the two senses gradually split apart in spelling, with 'than' settling on the comparative job and 'then' keeping the sense of time, a separation that was largely complete by the 1700s. The root is shared with German 'denn' and 'dann' and Dutch 'dan', all of which still blur the comparison and time meanings much as Old English once did. That common ancestry is exactly why writers still slip between 'than' and 'then' today, since the two words were genuinely one word for most of their history.

How the word is built

• Conjunction of comparison.