Wire

How to spell wire

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wire

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wire mean?

1. nounA thin, flexible strand of metal, used to carry electric current or to bind and support things.
2. verbTo send money electronically from one bank account to another.
3. verbTo fit or connect something with electrical wires.

Wire in a sentence

• noun

  The electrician stripped the end of the wire before connecting it.

• verb

  The buyer agreed to wire the deposit before the deadline.

• verb

  The builders had to wire the new kitchen for the oven and lights.

• noun

  She hung the heavy picture from a length of strong wire.

• verb

  Her employer will wire the salary directly to her account.

• verb

  An engineer came to wire the alarm into the main panel.

Where does wire come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Wire is a genuinely native English word, descending from the Old English wir, which named a thin, drawn-out thread of metal. The same root runs through the wider Germanic family, with cognates in Old Norse and Middle Low German, and it is thought to connect to an ancient root meaning 'to bend' or 'to plait', the kind of thing you do when twisting metal into shape. Through the medieval and early modern periods the word kept its plain, concrete meaning of metal pulled into a slender strand. Once the telegraph arrived in the nineteenth century, the metal lines that carried the signals lent the word a new sense, so to 'wire' someone came to mean sending a message, and that figurative thread later stretched to sending money electronically. The simple four-letter spelling has stayed remarkably stable, which is why the trap is not the letters themselves but the silent shaping of the long vowel rather than any added ending.

How the word is built

• wire (single root, from Old English wir: a thread of metal); no prefix or suffix