Walls

How to spell walls

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce walls

What does walls mean?

1. nounUpright structures that enclose, divide, or support a space, or that surround and protect an area.

Walls in a sentence

• The walls of the kitchen were painted a soft grey.

• Thick stone walls once surrounded the old market town.

Where does walls come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word goes back to the Old English weall, meaning a rampart or defensive barrier, which the Anglo-Saxons had themselves borrowed from the Latin vallum. That Latin term named a line of stakes or an earthen rampart thrown up around a Roman military camp, and it was built from vallus, meaning a single stake or palisade post. The sense gradually broadened from purely defensive fortifications to any upright structure that encloses or divides a space, including the sides of a room. Because the word is so old and so common, its spelling has stayed admirably simple; the only thing to watch is the doubled l, which the plural ending then sits behind. A close relative survives in the verb to wall, as in to wall something off, and in place names that recall old Roman fortifications.

How the word is built

• wall (from Old English weall: rampart, barrier)
• -s (plural)