That

How to spell that

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce that

What does that mean?

1. determinerUsed to identify a specific person or thing already mentioned, observed, or understood, or to introduce a clause.

That in a sentence

• I think that is correct.

• Pass me that book, please.

Where does that come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes straight from Old English thaet, which served as both the neuter form of the demonstrative se ('the, that') and as a relative and conjunctive particle. It belongs to the broad Germanic family of pointing words, with close relatives in Dutch dat and German das, all descended from a Proto-Germanic stem that signalled 'this thing here'. From its earliest records 'that' did triple duty: it pointed at objects, it introduced clauses ('I know that you came'), and it linked relative clauses ('the book that I read'). Over the centuries the older grammatical forms of the demonstrative collapsed, leaving 'that' and its plural 'those' as the survivors. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable, with the 'th' faithfully recording the voiced sound it has carried for more than a thousand years.

How the word is built

• that (single Old English root; not built from separable affixes)