Wherever

How to spell wherever

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce wherever

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wherever mean?

1. adverbIn, at, or to any place or every place; no matter where.

Wherever in a sentence

• Wherever you choose to live, the rent will eat a big share of your income.

• The courier promised to deliver the parcel wherever the customer happened to be.

Where does wherever come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word joins two old English elements that adults still use every day. The first part, 'where', descends from the Old English hwǣr, meaning 'in what place', which belongs to the same family of question words as 'who', 'what' and 'when'. The second part, 'ever', comes from Old English ǣfre, broadly meaning 'at all times' or 'always'; over time it weakened into a general intensifier that adds the sense 'no matter which'. The compound 'wherever' appears in Middle English as writers stitched the two together to mean 'in or to whatever place', and it has kept that meaning ever since. The spelling trap is simply the seam: the two e's meet across the join (wher + ever), so the middle reads 'her-ev', and there is exactly one r, not two.

How the word is built

• where (Old English hwǣr: in what place)
• -ever (intensifying suffix meaning 'at all' or 'no matter')