When

How to spell when

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce when

What does when mean?

1. adverbAt what time, or during the time that something happens.

When in a sentence

• When the meeting ends, we will head to lunch.

• Nobody could say when the parcel would arrive.

Where does when come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from Old English hwænne or hwonne, meaning 'at what time', part of the family of question words that began with the hw- spelling, alongside what, where and who. This hw- cluster traces back to the Proto-Germanic interrogative stem hwan, and ultimately to a Proto-Indo-European root that also gave Latin its qu- question words such as quando 'when'. Over the medieval period English flipped the spelling from hw- to wh-, so hwænne became the modern when, even though many speakers still pronounce the older breathy 'hw' sound. The vowel settled into the short 'e' we use today, while the meaning broadened from a pure question of time into a conjunction linking events. Because it sounds nothing like its silent-h cousins, when is rarely misspelled, but its wh- spelling is a direct fossil of that ancient Germanic question word.

How the word is built

• when (Old English hwænne/hwonne: interrogative of time; no separable affixes)