There's

How to spell there's

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce there's

What does there's mean?

1. otherA contraction of 'there is' or 'there has', used to state that something exists or has happened.

There's in a sentence

• There's a leak under the kitchen sink that needs fixing.

• There's no reason to cancel the meeting tomorrow.

Where does there's come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a contraction of 'there is' (and sometimes 'there has'), in which the word 'there' descends from the Old English 'thaer', meaning 'in or at that place'. That Old English word belonged to the same Germanic family that gave Dutch 'daar' and German 'da', and it has carried the sense of location since the earliest written English. Over time 'there' also took on a grammatical role as a so-called dummy subject, the empty placeholder used to announce existence, as in 'there is a reason'. The clipped form with an apostrophe standing in for the dropped letters of 'is' became common in writing as contractions gained acceptance in informal English. The spelling trap is purely the apostrophe and the 'there' stem: it must not be confused with the possessive 'theirs', which contains no apostrophe and traces back to a different Old Norse root for 'their'.

How the word is built

• there (in or at that place; existential marker)
• 's (contracted form of 'is' or 'has')

Words that sound like there's

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• theirs: Used to refer to something belonging to or associated with the people or things previously mentioned.