know

• (UK) IPA^(key): /nəʊ/
• (General American) enPR: nō, IPA^(key): /noʊ/

• Audio (US)

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• Audio (UK)

  (file)

  ('to know')
• Rhymes: -əʊ
• Homophones: no, noh

From Middle English knowen, from Old English cnāwan (“to know, perceive, recognise”), from Proto-West Germanic *knāan, from Proto-Germanic *knēaną (“to know”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵneh₃- (“to know”).

• knowe (obsolete)

know (third-person singular simple present knows, present participle knowing, simple past knew or (nonstandard) knowed, past participle known or (colloquial and nonstandard) knew)

1. (transitive) To perceive the truth or factuality of; to be certain of; to be certain that.
   • 1985 April 17, Frank Herbert, 15:46 from the start, in Frank Herbert speaking at UCLA 4/17/1985‎, UCLACommStudies, archived from the original on 10 February 2017:

     Question things. I have the most fun when I'm writing questioning things that people do not question- the assumptions that everybody knows are true.

   • 1991, Stephen Fry, The Liar, London: Heinemann, →OCLC, page 35:

     ‘I know whether a boy is telling me the truth or not.’
     ‘Thank you, sir.’
     Did he hell. They never bloody did.

   I know that I’m right and you’re wrong.

   He knew something terrible was going to happen.

2. (intransitive) To be or become aware or cognizant.

   Did you know Michelle and Jack were getting divorced? ― Yes, I knew.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, “A whimsical Adventure which befel the Squire, with the distressed Situation of Sophia”, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume VI, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book XVI, page 7:

     ‘A Gentleman!’ quoth the Squire, ‘who the Devil can he be? Do, Doctor, go down and ſee who ’tis. Mr. Blifil can hardly be come to town yet.—Go down, do, and know what his Buſineſs is.[’]

3. (transitive) To be aware of; to be cognizant of.

   Did you know Michelle and Jack were getting divorced? ― Yes, I knew.

   She knows where I live.

   I knew he was upset, but I didn't understand why.

   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 18:

     I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.

4. (intransitive, obsolete) To be acquainted (with another person).
   • c. 1606–1607, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene vi], page 350, column 1:

     You, and I haue knowne ſir.

5. (transitive) To be acquainted or familiar with; to have encountered.

   I know your mother, but I’ve never met your father.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 1:

     I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore kilts. But I see I shall have to amend that, because he was not a celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I had left New York for the West.

   • 2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

     Marsha is my roommate. — I know Marsha. She is nice.

     Audio (US)

     (file)

   1. (transitive, archaic, biblical, euphemistic) To have sexual relations with. This meaning normally specified in modern English as e.g. to ’know someone in the biblical sense’ or to ‘know biblically.’
      • 1560, [William Whittingham et al., transl.], The Bible and Holy Scriptures Conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament. […] (the Geneva Bible), Geneva: […] Rouland Hall, →OCLC, Genesis IIII:1, folio 2, verso:

        AFterwarde the man knewe Heuáh his wife, which cõceiued & bare Káin, & ſaid, I haue obteined a man by yͤ Lord.

      • 1939, Dorothy Parker, “Horsie,”, in Here lies: The collected stories of Dorothy Parker‎:

        Now Gerald had never thought of her having a mother. Then there must have been a father, too, some time. And Miss Wilmarth existed because two people once had loved and known. It was not a thought to dwell upon.

      • 2003 May 11, Garland Testa, 19:37 from the start, in Gary McCarver, director, Night and Deity (King of the Hill), season 7, episode 21, spoken by Dale Gribble (Johnny Hardwick), 20th Century Fox:

        Wait a second. Are you… attempting to know me?

6. (transitive) To experience.

   Their relationship knew ups and downs.

   • 1991, Irvin Haas, Historic Homes of the American Presidents, page 155:

     The Truman family knew good times and bad, […].

7. To understand or have a grasp of through experience or study.

   Let me do it. I know how it works.

   She knows how to swim.

   His mother tongue is Italian, but he also knows French and English.

   She knows chemistry better than anybody else.

   Know your enemy and know yourself.

   • 2013 August 3, “The machine of a new soul”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

     The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure.

8. (transitive) To be able to distinguish, to discern, particularly by contrast or comparison; to recognize the nature of.

   to know a person's face or figure

   to know right from wrong

   I wouldn't know one from the other.

   • 1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, Matthew vij:[16], folio ix, recto:

     Ye ſhall knowe them by their frutes.

   • 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, “The Shadow of the Bat”, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 6:

     The Bat—they called him the Bat. […]. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face.

   • 1980, Armored and mechanized brigade operations, p.3−29:

     Flares do not know friend from foe and so illuminate both. Changes in wind direction can result in flare exposure of the attacker while defenders hide in the shadows.

9. (transitive) To recognize as the same (as someone or something previously encountered) after an absence or change.
   • c. 1645-1688, Thomas Flatman, Translation of Part of Petronius Arbiter's Satyricon:

     At nearer view he thought he knew the dead, / And call'd the wretched man to mind.

   • 1818, [Mary Shelley], chapter V, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume I, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, →OCLC, page 115:

     Ernest also is so much improved, that you would hardly know him: […].

10. (intransitive) To have knowledge; to have information, be informed.

    It is vital that he not know.

    She knew of our plan.

    He knows about 19th century politics.

    • 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC, page 41:

      “My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”

    • 2014 April 21, “Subtle effects”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8884:

      Manganism has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated.

    • 2016, VOA Learning English (public domain)

      Marsha knows.

      Audio (US)

      (file)

11. (transitive) To be able to play or perform (a song or other piece of music).

    Do you know "Blueberry Hill"?

12. (transitive) To have indexed and have information about within one's database.
    • 2023 June 7, “Search Names and Meanings”, in Name Doctor‎, archived from the original on 7 June 2023:

      Mmm... Seems you searched for a name that we don't know, we'll send our trained monkeys to check what's in stock.

13. (transitive, philosophy) To maintain (a belief, a position) subject to a given philosophical definition of knowledge; to hold a justified true belief.

• This is generally a stative verb that rarely takes the continuous inflection. See Category:English stative verbs
• “Knowen” is found in some old texts as the past participle.
• In some old texts, the form “know to [verb]” rather than “know how to [verb]” is found, e.g. Milton wrote: “he knew himself to sing, and build the lofty rhymes”.

• 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i], page 128, column 1:

  O that a man might know / The end of this dayes buſineſſe, ere it come: / But it ſufficeth, that the day will end, / And then the end is knowne.

• 1838 October, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Light of Stars”, in Voices of the Night, Cambridge, Mass.: […] John Owen, published 1839, →OCLC, page 13:

  O fear not in a world like this, / And thou shalt know ere long, / Know how sublime a thing it is, / To suffer and be strong.

• 2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist:

  The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, essentially what today we might term a frameless magnifying glass or plain glass paperweight.

• (have sexual relations with): coitize, go to bed with, sleep with; see also Thesaurus:copulate with

• grok

know (uncountable)

1. (rare) Knowledge; the state of knowing.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii], page 259, column 2:

     That on the view and know of theſe Contents, […] He ſhould the bearers put to […] death, […]

2. Knowledge; the state of knowing. (Now confined to the fixed phrase in the know.)

• in the know

• “know”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “know”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

know (plural knows)

1. Alternative form of knowe (“hill, knoll”)
   • 1868, History of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, volumes 4-5, page 223:

     Owing to increasing numbers and consequent want of room for nestage, the old birds drove away the younger ones, who took refuge in their present abode at Fox's Know, where they have been located about six years.

You know, with the subject pronoun omitted.

• (Singapore) IPA^(key): [noː˨˦], [-oʊ-], [ˈno]

know

1. (Singlish) Used at the end of a sentence to draw attention to important information.

   Make sure you water the plants, know…

• (Singlish particles): ah, lah, leh, liao, lor, mah, meh, one, sia, what

• Wee, Lionel (2003) “The birth of a particle: know in Colloquial Singapore English”, in World Englishes, volume 22, number 1, →DOI, pages 5–13

• Kwon, wonk

From Proto-Brythonic *know, from Proto-Celtic *knūs.

• IPA^(key): [knoʊ]

know pl (singulative knowen or knofen)

1. nuts

• know dor (“peanuts”)
• know Frynk (“walnuts”)
• know koko (“coconuts”)
• know koll (“hazelnuts”)
• know muskat (“nutmeg”)
• know toos (“doughnuts”)
• plisk know (“nutshells”)

know

1. Alternative form of kne

know

1. Alternative form of knouth
   • 1867, GLOSSARY OF THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY:

     Doost thou know fidi is a hamaron?

     Do you know where is the horse-collar?

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 44