where
pronunciation
How to pronounce where in British English:
UK [weə(r)]
How to pronounce where in American English:
US [wer]
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- Adverb:
- in or at or to what place
Word Origin
- where
- where: [OE] Where is an ancient Indo-European formation derived from the interrogative base *qwo- (source also of English what, who, etc). In Germanic (where its relatives include Dutch waar, Swedish var, Danish hvor, and the war- of German warum ‘why’) it has largely become limited in its application to ‘place’, but in other branches of the Indo-European language family it performs other interrogative functions: Latin cūr ‘why’, for instance, Welsh pyr ‘why’, and Sanskrit kárhi- ‘when’, beside Lithuanian kur ‘where’.
- where (adv.)
- Old English hwær, hwar "at what place," from Proto-Germanic adverb *hwar (cognates: Old Saxon hwar, Old Norse hvar, Old Frisian hwer, Middle Dutch waer, Old High German hwar, German wo, Gothic hvar "where"), equivalent to Latin cur, from PIE interrogative base *kwo- (see who). Where it's at attested from 1903.
Example
- 1. Where were you last april ?
- 2. Where does it take place ?
- 3. Where were those qualities now ?
- 4. That is where it properly belongs .
- 5. Where lost microbe empires may still survive underground .