Threw

How to spell threw

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce threw

What does threw mean?

1. verbThe past tense of throw: propelled something through the air with a movement of the arm.

Threw in a sentence

• The pitcher threw the ball straight over the plate.

• She threw her coat over the back of the chair and sat down.

Where does threw come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Threw is the past tense of the verb 'throw', which comes from the Old English thrawan, meaning 'to twist, turn, or curl'. In its earliest sense the word had nothing to do with hurling objects; it described twisting fibres or turning something on a lathe, a meaning that survives in the craft of throwing pottery on a wheel. By the Middle English period the sense had shifted from twisting toward the modern idea of casting or flinging something through the air, perhaps from the twisting motion of the arm in a throw. The strong-verb pattern of Old English gave us the vowel change from 'throw' to 'threw', the same kind of shift seen in 'blow' and 'blew' or 'grow' and 'grew'. That irregular spelling, with 'ew' rather than the 'ough' of its homophone 'through', is the trap: the two words sound identical but trace back to entirely separate Old English roots.

How the word is built

• threw (irregular past tense of 'throw', from Old English thrawan)

Words that sound like threw

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

• through: Moving in one side of something and out of the other, or by means of a process or agency.