how

how class II gender (canonical masculine)


how

How often do you practice?

The gauge indicated how hot the oven was.

How soon can I see the doctor?

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.

1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 46:

How damaged is her self-esteem?

2013, Diane Sullivan Everstine, Louis Everstine, Strategic Interventions for People in Crisis, Trauma, and Disaster: Revised Edition, Routledge, →ISBN:

(interrogative) To what degree or extent.

How do you solve this puzzle?

How else can we get this finished?

She showed him how to do it.

I remember how I solved this puzzle.

(interrogative) In what manner:
By what means.

How should I know whether he likes raisins or not? Ask him!

(interrogative) In what manner:
With overtones of why, for what reason.

People should be free to live how they want.

In any manner in which; in whatever way; however.

How do you sell your brandy? We sell it by the gallon, and not by the bottle.

1831, Nicolas Wanostrocht, A Grammar of the French Language: With Practical Exercises, page 372:

How does God appear in these religions? Hinduism has a thousand faces for God, some likable, some horrible. You can pick and choose your preferred image. Buddhism does not even have an image of God, but concentrates on man.

2005, Tim Stafford, Knowing the Face of God, Revised Edition: Deepening Your Personal Relationship with God, Wipf and Stock Publishers, →ISBN, page 191:

In what form, shape, measure, quantity, etc.

How the stock market interprets events has real consequences.

A heap of stamps? Yes. Stamps they were indeed, hundreds of penny Queen's Heads neatly mounted on the original sheets. "Good God!" exclaimed Mr. Erskine as he turned to Mr. Sackville, "how am I to take this, sir?" said he severely. "Where are the real stamps? Were they ever inside, ever in your possession at all? If it is a joke, it is a very poor one."

(interrogative) In what manner:
With what meaning or effect.

"How art thou called? Thy name make known; Thy father's name and family,—tell me thy father's and thine own."

1907, Edward Byles Cowell, The Jātaka: Or, Stories of the Buddha's Former Births, page 44:

Salutation—How does one address the recipient; what titles, greetings, and honorifics are preferred; how does one manage the problem of unknown gender;[…]

2015, Edmond H. Weiss, The Elements of International English Style: A Guide to Writing Correspondence, Reports, Technical Documents, and Internet Pages for a Global Audience, Routledge, →ISBN, page 111:

(interrogative) In what manner:
By what title or what name.

Shal. How a score of ewes now?
Sil. Thereafter as they be: a score of good ewes may be worth ten pounds.

c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:

At what price, for what amount (of money).

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.

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

How are you?

How was your vacation?

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

2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

(interrogative) In what state or condition.

How very interesting!

How wonderful it was to receive your invitation.

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

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

How England had to fight for victory against this steely Denmark with an inspired keeper in Kasper Schmeichel, especially after conceding their first goal of the tournament to Mikkel Damsgaard's stunning free-kick after 30 minutes.

2021 July 7, Phil McNulty, “England 2-1 Denmark”, in BBC Sport:

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

don't teach your grandmother how to milk ducks

don't try to teach grandma how to suck eggs

it's not what you say but how you say it

hoe

used as a modifier to indicate surprise, delight, or other strong feelings

From Middle English how, hou, hu, hwu, from Old English hū, from Proto-West Germanic *hwō, from Proto-Germanic *hwō (“through what, how”), 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”), North Frisian ho, hü, hur (“how”), Saterland Frisian wo (“how”), West Frisian hoe (“how”), Dutch hoe (“how”), Low German ho, wo, wu (“how”), German wie (“how”), Swedish hur (“how”). See who and compare why.


how

She told me how her father was a doctor.

“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.

2010 April 24, Jesse McKinley, “Don’t Call It ‘Pot’ in This Circle; It’s a Profession”, in The New York Times, page A1:


how

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

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

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

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.

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

The means by which something is accomplished.

hows (plural)
how's (plural)
'ow (alternative)


how

Fianlly, as regards the places in which these rites and mysteries may have been held, certain writers believe them to have been the "Fairy Hills" or "howes" in various parts of Scotland.

1928, Lewis Spence, Mysteries of Britain, page v. 136:

The fairy feast inside the howe (and this barrow is hill-sized) reminds one of nothing so much as a tale in the Icelandic Eyrbyggia saga, written in the mid thirteenth century.

1985, Jennifer Westwood, Albion, published 1992, page xi. 432:

(dialectal) An artificial barrow or tumulus; in later folklore, associated with fairies.

(dialectal) A small hill in northern England.

hows (plural)
howe (alternative)
'ow (alternative)

From Middle English howe, hough, hogh, partly from Old English hōh (“promontory”), and partly from Old Norse haugr (“a how, mound”). Compare Old French höe (“hillock, hill”), from the same Germanic source.


how

A greeting, used in representations of Native American speech.

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


how

English: how

Geordie English: hoo

Scots: hoo, how, foo

Yola: fowe, how

From Old English hū, from Proto-West Germanic *hwō, from Proto-Germanic *hwō.

hou (alternative)
howe (alternative)
hu (alternative)
hwu (alternative)
whu (alternative)
wou (alternative)
wu (alternative)


how

English: how

Geordie English: hoo

Scots: hoo, how, foo


how

Alternative form of hough (“promontory”)


how

How yarthe to-die, mee joee?

1867, GLOSSARY OF THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY: