Too

How to spell too

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce too

What does too mean?

1. adverbTo a higher degree than is desirable or acceptable; or, in addition.

Too in a sentence

• The soup is too hot to drink.

• He arrived early, and his sister did too.

• The kettle is too hot to touch.

• He drove too fast and got a ticket.

• I ate too much at dinner.

Where does too come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word 'too' is simply a stressed form of 'to', which descends from the Old English preposition 'to', meaning 'in the direction of'. For centuries the two were written interchangeably, but by the 1500s writers began doubling the vowel to 'too' whenever the word carried its adverbial senses of 'in addition' or 'excessively'. This spelling split was a deliberate convenience: the extra 'o' marked the emphatic, fully stressed pronunciation and kept the adverb visually separate from the unstressed preposition 'to'. The root itself is Germanic, with close cousins in Dutch 'toe' and German 'zu', both carrying the same idea of motion toward something. The lingering trap for adult writers is precisely that history, since 'too', 'to', and the number 'two' all sound alike yet split off from related origins.

How the word is built

• Adverb meaning "also" or "excessively".

Words that sound like too

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

• to: Expressing motion or direction toward a place, person, or condition, or marking the infinitive of a verb.
• two: The cardinal number equal to one plus one; the number 2.