Years

How to spell years

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce years

What does years mean?

1. nounMore than one year; periods each lasting twelve months.

Years in a sentence

• She spent five years studying medicine abroad.

• The old house had stood empty for many years.

Where does years come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural of 'year', which comes from the Old English 'gear', meaning a year or the annual cycle of the seasons. That word traces back to a Germanic root shared with Dutch 'jaar' and German 'Jahr', and beyond that to an ancient Indo-European root that carried the sense of a season or a period of time. The original meaning was tied closely to the agricultural calendar, the recurring round of spring, summer, autumn and winter. The 'y' at the front reflects how the old 'g' sound softened into a 'y' glide over centuries of English speech. The plural simply adds the regular '-s' ending, which is why the spelling stays straightforward; the only real trap is the silent shift from spoken 'yeers' to the written 'years'.

How the word is built

• year (from Old English gear: a year)
• -s (plural suffix)