why
adverb · verb · noun
Simple meaning
For what cause, reason.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
wyIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈwaɪ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adverb
Introducing a complete question.
interrogative
For what cause, reason, or purpose.
Introducing a verb phrase (bare infinitive clause).
Introducing a noun or other phrase.
With a negative, used rhetorically to make a suggestion.
verb
intransitivetransitive
To ask (someone) the question "why?".
noun
The name of the Latin-script letter Y/y.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (interrogative) For what cause, reason, or purpose.
Used this way, why is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- how come , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use why
- “We need to understand why the problem occurred in the first place.”adverb
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.