Weak

How to spell weak

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce weak

What does weak mean?

1. adjectiveLacking physical strength, force, intensity, or firmness.

Weak in a sentence

• The rope was too weak to hold the heavy crate.

• After the long illness she felt weak and tired.

Where does weak come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The word comes from the Old Norse veikr, meaning 'pliant' or 'easily bent', which in turn went back to a root sense of something that yielded or gave way under pressure. Norse settlers carried the word into northern England during the Viking age, and it gradually pushed aside the older Old English form wac, which meant much the same thing. The early sense was very physical, describing material that bends or breaks easily, and from there it spread to bodies lacking strength and then to anything feeble, faint, or dilute. The spelling settled on the 'ea' digraph, which is exactly what separates it on the page from its troublesome homophone 'week', the unit of seven days. Because the two words sound identical, the trap is never the letters themselves but choosing the right pair: 'weak' is the one about strength, and a useful memory hook is that a 'weak' thing can break, both spelled with that 'ea'.

How the word is built

• weak (single root from Old Norse veikr: pliant, bendable); the spelling keeps the silent-looking 'ea' digraph that distinguishes it from the homophone 'week'

Words that sound like weak

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

• week: A period of seven consecutive days, often counted from Monday or Sunday.