An

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A lot of people learned the rule that you put“a”before words that start with consonants and “an”before words that start with vowels, but it’s actually more complicated than that. For example, here’s Matthew with a question: I’ve been wondering if it is actually“a hour”or“an hour.”“An hour”sounds more correct, but“a hour”reads more correct to me. I’m just curious what it should be. The rule isthat you use“a”before words that start with a consonantsoundand“an”before words that start with a vowelsound. Should You Use ‘A’or ‘An’? So to answer Matt’s question,“an hour”is correct, because “hour”starts with a vowel sound. People seem to ask most often about words that start with the lettersHandUbecause sometimes these words start with The lettersOandMcan be tricky too. Usually you put“an”before words that start withO, but sometimes you useA. For example, you’d useAif you were to say, “She has a one-track mind,” because “one-track”starts with a Use“a”before words that start with a consonantsoundand“an”before words that start with a vowelsound. Other letters can also be pronounced either way. Just remember it is the sound that governs whether you use“a”or“an,” not the actual first letter of the word. One complication is when words are pronounced differently in British English and American English. For example, the word for a certain kind of plant is pronounced “erb” in American English and “herb” in British English. So the proper form in America is“an herb,” and the proper form in ...

Contents • 1 English • 1.1 Etymology 1 • 1.1.1 Alternative forms • 1.1.2 Prefix • 1.2 Etymology 2 • 1.2.1 Prefix • 1.2.1.1 Synonyms • 1.2.1.2 Derived terms • 1.2.1.3 Related terms • 1.3 See also • 1.4 Anagrams • 2 Aromanian • 2.1 Prefix • 3 Classical Nahuatl • 3.1 Alternative forms • 3.2 Prefix • 4 Cornish • 4.1 Prefix • 4.2 References • 5 Dutch • 5.1 Etymology • 5.2 Pronunciation • 5.3 Prefix • 5.3.1 Derived terms • 6 French • 6.1 Pronunciation • 6.2 Prefix • 6.2.1 Derived terms • 7 German • 7.1 Etymology • 7.2 Pronunciation • 7.3 Prefix • 7.3.1 Derived terms • 7.3.2 See also • 8 Ido • 8.1 Etymology • 8.2 Prefix • 8.2.1 Derived terms • 9 Irish • 9.1 Etymology 1 • 9.1.1 Alternative forms • 9.1.2 Pronunciation • 9.1.3 Prefix • 9.1.3.1 Usage notes • 9.1.3.2 Derived terms • 9.2 Etymology 2 • 9.2.1 Alternative forms • 9.2.2 Pronunciation • 9.2.3 Prefix • 9.2.3.1 Derived terms • 9.3 Etymology 3 • 9.3.1 Prefix • 9.3.1.1 Derived terms • 9.4 Mutation • 9.5 Further reading • 10 Italian • 10.1 Prefix • 10.1.1 Derived terms • 11 Luxembourgish • 11.1 Etymology • 11.2 Pronunciation • 11.3 Prefix • 11.3.1 Usage notes • 11.3.2 Antonyms • 11.3.3 Derived terms • 12 Malagasy • 12.1 Prefix • 12.1.1 See also • 13 Maquiritari • 13.1 Pronunciation • 13.2 Prefix • 14 Middle English • 14.1 Prefix • 15 Middle Welsh • 15.1 Etymology • 15.2 Prefix • 15.2.1 Derived terms • 15.2.2 Descendants • 16 Old English • 16.1 Alternative forms • 16.2 Etymology • 16.3 Pronunciation • 16.4 Prefix • 16.4.1 Related...

About 10 years ago, the critic James Wolcott suggested that Martin Amis (who Lionel Asbo for a dozen more Amis interviews. In one of these conversations, Amis explained that Vladimir Nabokov was the most hospitable of novelists, always offering you a nice drink and his finest chair. By contrast, Amis said, reading James Joyce’s work, with puns whose appreciation requires a knowledge of Old Norse and the names of minor Irish rivers, was like arriving at an entryway rigged for pratfalls, with mousetraps snapping at your feet as you struggled to find the light switch, only to discover that no one was home. I have wondered where on this spectrum of hospitality one might find Cormac McCarthy, who died yesterday at 89. Had he taken Wolcott’s proposed form of literary early retirement, we would have been deprived of two great books— The Passenger and Stella Maris—and gotten essentially zilch in return, so arid and gnomic were his few public utterances. He was Joycean, by way of Faulkner, in his total unwillingness to spare the reader looking up an obscure word. (My copy of Blood Meridian has a slip of paper in it, with a list of words I had to look up and have never used since: weskit, anchorite, thrapple.) Like Joyce, he used such words, especially Germanic ones, without inhibition, although the effect was totally different. The McCarthy voice was timeless—not in the pedestrian sense of “will be read for generations,” but in the unsettling, cosmological sense that one could not ...

a/an When to Say a or an The a or an. But how do we know when to say a and when to say an? The rule is really very simple. It depends on the SOUND at the start of the following word. (It does not depend on the way we WRITE the following word, it depends on the way we SAY it.) a + consonant SOUND If the following word starts with a a: • a cat • a game of golf • a human emotion • a Peruvian • a very nice lady an + vowel SOUND If the following word starts with a an: • an apple • an easy job • an interesting film • an old man • an umbrella The Importance of SOUND Normally, we pronounce consonant letters with a consonant sound, and vowel letters with a vowel sound. But there are some exceptions. The rule about a or an is still the same. You just need to think about the SOUND, not the WRITING. Look at these examples: vowel LETTER but consonant SOUND a European country you-ro-pe-an a one-day conference won-day a university you-ni-ver-si-ty consonant LETTER but vowel SOUND an honest man on-est an hour our an FBI agent eff-bee-eye See also

An Lushan, An Lu-shan, original surname Kang, imperial name Xiongwu, (born 703, Yingzhou [now Chaoyang, Liaoning province], China—died 757, Luoyang, ad 755, proclaimed himself Early life and career The rowshān (“light”). An Lushan’s ancestors belonged to a group of Sogdians who had been incorporated into the Eastern Turks, and his mother was from a noble Turkish clan. The Eastern Turks, whose ascendancy in Mongolia dated from the 6th century, had been conquered by the Chinese emperor Taizong at the beginning of the Tang dynasty but had made themselves independent and were enjoying renewed Qapaghan Qaghan, in 716, however, led to disorder and strife, and the Ans sought refuge in An Lushan’s An Lushan’s rebellion By the time of Minister Li Linfu’s death in 752, An Lushan had accumulated three frontier provinces under his command and was the most powerful general in the empire. After the dictator’s Great Yen dynasty. Meanwhile, loyal Tang forces had been mobilized and had taken up defensive positions in the narrow pass up the Ge Shuhan, the general in charge of the defense of the eastern approaches to Everlasting Remorse” and of countless other works of art. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Although An Lushan’s forces occupied Chang’an, he himself remained behind in Luoyang. By this time he was seriously ailing, perhaps with diabetes. He was nearly blind and suffered from extreme irascibility, which made his attendants go in constant...

Word History: The forms of the indefinite article are good examples of what can happen to a word when it becomes habitually pronounced without stress. An is in fact a weakened form of one; both an and one come from Old English ān, "one." In early Middle English, besides representing the cardinal numeral "one," ān developed the special function of indefinite article, and in this role the word was ordinarily pronounced with very little or no stress. Sound changes that affected unstressed syllables elsewhere in the language affected it also. First, the vowel was shortened and eventually reduced to a schwa (ə). Second, the n was lost before consonants. This loss of n affected some other words as well; it explains why English has both my and mine, thy and thine. Originally these were doublets just like a and an, with mine and thine occurring only before vowels, as in Ben Jonson's famous line "Drink to me only with thine eyes." By the time of Modern English, though, my and thy had replaced mine and thine when used before nouns (that is, when not used predicatively, as in This book is mine), just as some varieties of Modern English use a even before vowels ( a apple). an 2 also an' (ən, ăn when stressed) a suffix with the general sense “of, pertaining to, having qualities of,” occurring orig. in adjectives borrowed from Latin and formed from nouns denoting places ( Roman; urban) or persons ( Augustan), now commonly forming adjectives and nouns denoting affiliation with a place or...