Word.ws English Dictionary

ho

UK/həʊ/US/hoʊ/

ho interjection: used to attract attention to something sighted, usually by lookouts.

Interjection

  1. Used to attract attention to something sighted, usually by lookouts.
    • Sail ho!
    • Land ho!
  2. halloo; hey; a call to excite attention, or to give notice of approach.
    • What noise there, ho?c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • Ho! who's within?c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  3. (rare) Said accompanying a vigorous attack.
    • "I'll hit you again, you thief !” he cried angrily, shaking “Ho-ho-ho!” he croaked.1900, Ching Foo, the Yellow Dwarf; Or the Bradys and the Opium Smokers, page 2
    • It was quite an astonishing show. Colonel Paul Malone of the U.S. Army kept thwacking away with all his might and main, shouting "Ho!"1955, John Sack, From Here to Shimbashi - Volume 637, page 172

Noun (1)

ho

  1. A stop; a halt; a moderation of pace.
    • O I, a plague on ’em, there’s no ho with ’em, they’re madder then^([sic – meaning than]) March hares.1604 (date written), Tho[mas] Dekker, [Thomas Middleton], The Honest Whore. […] (4th quarto), London: […] Nicholas Okes for Robert Basse, […], published 1616, →OCLC, Act I, scene ii, signature I3...

Noun (2)

ho (plural hos or hoes or (humorous, nonstandard) heaux)

  1. (US, derogatory, slang, vulgar) A whore; a sexually promiscuous woman; in general use as a highly offensive term of abuse for a woman with connotations of loose sexuality.
    • Bros before hoes!
    • So you want to see the show? You really don't have to be a ho.2001, “Psycho”, in Toxicity, performed by Serj Tankian with System of a Down
  2. (US, offensive, slang, vulgar) A woman in general; a bitch.

Verb (1)

ho (third-person singular simple present hoes, present participle hoeing, simple past and past participle hoed)

  1. (US, ambitransitive, slang, vulgar) To act as a ho, to prostitute.
    • She holds down a decent job during the day, but is secretly hoeing around with at least 5 different trifling men.2003 November 18, Greywolf Johnson, “Do you know any of these? ”, in alt.strange.days (Usenet)

Noun (3)

ho (plural hos)

  1. (US, obsolete, slang, vulgar) Care, anxiety, trouble, sorrow.
    • Though there bee A thousand cares that heape my hoe.1567, George Turberville, “A. Sani di Cure Aunsweres”, in Heroycall Epistles of Ovid, 155v
    • Him that..this gentlewoman is in such a hoe about.1798, Charlotte Turner Smith, The Young Philosopher, I. 195

Verb (2)

ho

  1. (US, obsolete, slang, vulgar) To care, be anxious, to long.
    • To ho for anything, to long for any thing. Berks.1787, Francis Grose, “Ho”, in A Provincial Glossary: […]
    • (3) To long for anything; to be careful and anxious. West.[1846, James Orchard Halliwell, “HO”, in A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs, and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century. […], volume I (A–I), London: John...

Proper noun (1) capitalized: HO

HO

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Heckler-Ohlin (thereom).
  2. (UK, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Home Office.

Noun (4) capitalized: HO

HO (countable and uncountable, plural HOs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of head office.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of holy orders.
  3. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of HO scale.

Noun (5) capitalized: Ho

Ho pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) A Central-Eastern Indian Adivasi tribe numbering around 1 million, mainly following the religion of Sarna Dhorom

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Ho

Ho

  1. A Munda language spoken in India and Bangladesh.

Proper noun (3) capitalized: Ho

Ho

  1. A surname.

ho meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam

ho in Tamil

ஹோ, ஹோ க்கு

ho in Bengali

হো

ho in Telugu

హో

ho in Malayalam

ഹോ
More languagesFewer languages
ho in Kannada
ಹೋ, ಹೊ
ho in Gujarati
હો
ho in Odia
ହୋ
ho in Vietnamese
đĩ, phò

Examples of ho in a sentence

  • Ho! all ye females that would live unshent, / Fly from the reach of Cyned's regiment.1597, [Joseph Hall], “(please specify the page)”, in Virgidemiarum, Sixe Bookes. First Three Bookes, of Tooth-lesse Satyrs. […], London...
  • Ho, ho, here we are!" he cried till it was re-echoed from all the hills around.1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 93:
  • "How such swooning daughters can do it, constantly fainting and having hysterics, is a mystery to me," said Muriel Jane.1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 24:
  • They was saying the jawn freaked out and called the cops cause all her sorority sistahs started ragging on her and calling her a stank ho for fucking half the basketball team.2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 204:

All 30 example sentences with ho

Forms of ho

Noun
pluralhos
pluralhoes
alternative formhoe
alternative form'ho
pluralHOs
plural (nonstandard, humorous)heaux
Verb
third-person singular presenthoes
present participlehoeing
past participlehoed
pasthoed

Origin of ho

From Middle English ho, hoo (interjection), from Old English hō, probably from Old Norse hó! (interjection, also, a shepherd's call). Compare Dutch ho, German ho, Old French ho! (“hold!, halt!”).

Pronunciation spelling of whore in non-rhotic accents with the dough-door merger, such as some varieties of African American Vernacular English; compare mo (“more”), fo' (“for; four”). The noun first appears c. 1964, whereas the verb first appears c. 1972.

From Middle English howe, houwe, hoȝe, from Old English hogu and hoga, from Proto-Germanic *hugô, *hugiz, *huguz (“mind, thought, understanding”), akin to Old High German hugu, hugi (Middle High German hüge), Old Saxon hugi (Middle Dutch höghe, Dutch heug), Old Norse hugr, Gothic 𐌷𐌿𐌲𐍃 (hugs).

Words formed from ho

Phrases with ho

15 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with ho

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ho

What does ho mean?
Ho means used to attract attention to something sighted, usually by lookouts.
What is ho in Tamil?
Ho in Tamil is ஹோ, ஹோ க்கு. See Ho meaning in Tamil.
How do you use ho in a sentence?
Ho! all ye females that would live unshent, / Fly from the reach of Cyned's regiment.
What part of speech is ho?
Ho can be an interjection, a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ho?
Ho is pronounced /həʊ/ (UK).

Words near ho in the dictionary

  1. HNTX
  2. HNW
  3. HNWI
  4. HNWIs
  5. HNY
  6. ho
  7. ho back
  8. ho bag
  9. ho bags
  10. Ho Chi Minh
  11. Ho Chi Minh City

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ho (page history and authors); HO (page history and authors); Ho (page history and authors); ho (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ho (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ho (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ho (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ho (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ho (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ho (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-ho.ogg.

Cite this entry: “ho.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ho. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.