Those

How to spell those

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce those

What does those mean?

1. determinerUsed to point to specific people or things at a distance from the speaker, the plural of that.

Those in a sentence

• Those boxes in the garage need to be sorted before the move.

• She returned all those library books a week late.

Where does those come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word those comes from Old English, the earliest form of English spoken by the Anglo-Saxons. It developed from thas, a plural demonstrative form related to thes and that, all built on the same ancient pointing word that gives us the, this, and that. The original sense was simply 'these here' or 'those there', a way of indicating particular things at a distance, and over the Middle English period thas settled into the spelling those we recognise today. The 'th' sound and the silent-feeling long 'o' both trace straight back to these Germanic roots. Because the word is so common and so old, its irregular spelling has stayed fixed for centuries, which is precisely why it reads so naturally to modern eyes.

How the word is built

• thos- (from Old English thas, plural of thes/that)
• -e