how

• 'ow

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: hou, IPA^(key): /haʊ/
• (General New Zealand, General Australian) IPA^(key): /hæŏ/

• Audio (UK)

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• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -aʊ

From Middle English how, hou, hu, hwu, Old English hū, from Proto-Germanic *hwō, from the same root as hwæt (“who, what”). /hw/ > /h/ due to wh-cluster reduction in Old English; compare who, which underwent this change later, and thus is spelt wh (Middle English spelling of /hw/) but pronounced /h/ (it previously had a different vowel, hence avoided the spelling and sound change in Old English). Vowel change per Great Vowel Shift.

Akin to Scots hoo, foo (“how”), Saterland Frisian wo (“how”), West Frisian hoe (“how”), Low German ho, wo, wu (“how”), Dutch hoe (“how”), German wie (“how”), Swedish hur (“how”). See who and compare why.

how (not comparable)

1. (interrogative) To what degree.

   How often do you practice?

   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 4, in The Celebrity:

     No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly wait.

2. (interrogative) In what manner.

   How do you solve this puzzle?   How else can we get this finished?

   • 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

     Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. […] But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts as a territory, what counts as output and how to value it. Indeed, economists are still tweaking it.

3. (interrogative) In what state.

   How are you?

   How was your vacation?

   • 2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

     How's the new apartment? — The new apartment is great!

     Audio (US)

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4. Used as a modifier to indicate surprise, delight, or other strong feelings in an exclamation.

   How very interesting!   How wonderful it was to receive your invitation.

   • 1973, “Yesterday Once More”, in Now & Then, performed by the Carpenters:

     Those were such happy times and not so long ago / How I wondered where they'd gone

• See usage notes on else (adverb).
• How good is it? means "To what extent is it good?", whereas How is it good? means "In what manner is it good?". Likewise, I know how good it is means "I know the extent to which it is good", whereas I know how it is good means "I know the manner in which it is good".

how (plural hows)

1. The means by which something is accomplished.

   I am not interested in the why, but in the how.

   • 1924, Joseph Rickaby, Studies on God and His Creatures, page 102:

     It is an a posteriori argument, evincing the fact, but not the how.

   • 2008 March 21, The New York Times, “Movie Guide and Film Series”, in New York Times‎:

     A wham-bam caper flick, efficiently directed by Roger Donaldson, that fancifully revisits the mysterious whos and speculative hows of a 1971 London bank heist.

how

1. In which way; in such way.

   I remember how to solve this puzzle.

2. That, the fact that, the way that.
   • 2010 April 24, Jesse McKinley, “Don’t Call It ‘Pot’ in This Circle; It’s a Profession”, in The New York Times, page A1:

     “There’s this real Al Capone fear that they’re going to get our guys, not on marijuana, but on something else,” Mr. Edson said, referring to how Capone was eventually charged with tax evasion rather than criminal activity.

From Old Norse haugr.

how (plural hows)

1. (dialectal) An artificial barrow or tumulus.
2. (dialectal) A small hill in northern England. (Usage preserved mainly in place names.)

From a Siouan language, compare Lakota háu. Alternatively from Wyandot haau.

• howgh

how

1. A greeting, used in representations of Native American speech.

• how in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• “how” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• how at OneLook Dictionary Search

• W.H.O., WHO, Who, who

• IPA^(key): /hou/

how

1. taro

how

1. yes

• yamá

• IPA^(key): /ɔw/, [ow]

how

1. here