The

How to spell the

3 letters · 1 syllable

19 of the 57 people asked to spell the in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce the

What does the mean?

1. determinerThe definite article, used before a noun to refer to a specific or already-known person or thing.

The in a sentence

• I read the paper that was left on my desk yesterday.

• I left the keys in my coat pocket.

Where does the come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from Old English, where the definite article had many forms that changed with gender, number, and grammatical case, such as 'se' for masculine, 'seo' for feminine, and 'thaet' for neuter. Over time the various forms collapsed toward a single 'th-' form, and by the Middle English period the indeclinable 'the' had taken over as the all-purpose definite article. The root is Germanic and shares ancestry with the demonstratives 'that', 'this', and 'those', all pointing back to the same pointing or specifying function. The spelling preserves the 'th' digraph, which stands for the voiced sound heard at the start of the word, the same one used in 'this' and 'that'. As the single most frequent word in written English, it long ago settled into its short, fixed three-letter shape.

How the word is built

• the (single unanalysable root; the definite article, no prefix or suffix)