1 used in questions to ask the reason for or purpose of sth:
Why were you late? * Tell me why you did it. * 'I would like you to go.' 'Why me?' * (spoken) Why oh why do people keep leaving the door open?
2 used in questions to suggest that it is not necessary to do sth:
Why get upset just because you got one bad grade? * Why bother to write? We'll see him tomorrow.
3 used to give or talk about a reason:
That's why I left so early. * I know you did it-I just want to know why. * The reason why the injection needs repeating every year is that the virus changes.
IDIOMS
why ever used in questions to mean 'why', expressing surprise:
Why ever didn't you tell us before?
why not? used to make or agree to a suggestion:
Why not write to her? * 'Let's eat out.' 'Why not?' * Why don't we go together?
exclamation (old-fashioned or AmE) used to express surprise, lack of patience, etc:
Why Jane, it's you! * Why, it's easy-a child could do it!
Part of speech: noun
IDIOMS
the whys and (the) wherefores the reasons for sth:
I had no intention of going into the whys and the wherefores of the situation.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for why is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is why a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, why is tagged as adverb.
Does why appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — why appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
