Through

How to spell through

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce through

What does through mean?

1. prepositionMoving in one side of something and out of the other, or by means of a process or agency.

Through in a sentence

• We walked through the park.

• She walked through the rain without an umbrella.

Where does through come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English thurh, meaning 'through' or 'by means of', which traces back to the Proto-Germanic thurhw and is closely related to the German durch and the Dutch door. The original sense was strictly spatial, describing motion that passes from one side of something to the other, and from there it broadened to express cause and agency, as in achieving something 'through' effort. The bizarre modern spelling is a fossil: the 'gh' once represented a throaty consonant (like the 'ch' in Scottish 'loch') that English speakers gradually stopped pronouncing, leaving the silent letters stranded on the page. Because the sound vanished but the letters did not, 'through' now rhymes simply with 'true' yet keeps four extra letters that trip up writers. The same lost consonant haunts its relatives 'thorough', 'though', and 'bough', which is why this little cluster of words is so notoriously hard to spell.

How the word is built

• through (single Old English root thurh; no separable prefix or suffix)

Words that sound like through

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

• threw: The past tense of throw: propelled something through the air with a movement of the arm.