With

How to spell with

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce with

What does with mean?

1. prepositionAccompanied by, in the company of, or having as a feature or accompaniment.

With in a sentence

• She came with her sister.

• I'll have tea with a slice of lemon.

Where does with come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English 'wið', which originally meant 'against', 'opposite', or 'toward', not the modern sense of accompaniment. You can still see that older 'against' meaning preserved inside compounds such as 'withstand' (stand against) and 'withhold' (hold back). Over the medieval period the meaning softened and shifted: a word that once signalled opposition came to signal closeness and togetherness, partly absorbing the role of the older Old English word 'mid' (meaning 'with'), which then dropped out of use. The spelling keeps the 'th' digraph that descends directly from the Old English form, and the word is one of the most ancient and stable in the language, shared with the wider Germanic family.

How the word is built

• with (a single Old English root, not divisible into prefix and suffix)