Word.ws English Dictionary

how so

how so phrase: how?; In what way?

Phrase

how so?

  1. How?; In what way?
    • The city of Melbourne has much more culture than Sydney. ― How so?
  2. (idiomatic) Why?; For what reason?
    • I'm feeling really depressed. ― How so?

Adverb

how so?

  1. How; In what way; however
    • But how so thys money was lent or gyded, at thys daye the cheste remayneth in the chamber of London, wythout money or pledges for the same.1809, The Literary Panorama, and National Register, page 1179
    • But we have groaned over this experience, an O ! dear ! with every breath, and wished ourselves out of it, someway, somehow, no matter what way or how so we were rid of it.1897, Ursula Newell Gestefeld, How We Master Our Fate, page 62
  2. (idiomatic) Why; For what reason.
    • Yet how so ere I love, I must be wife.1598, Robert Greene, The Scottish Historie of James the Fourth
    • That picture wasn't much to look at, being so old and all, but Mrs. Oaks made like it looked so nice; or, that's what she said as she stared at it, looking back and forth at the picture and me like it wasn't so. Only, she just didn't know how so it wasn't. It wasn't me at all.2013, Earlene Jernigan-Carter, When Life Just Happens: A Book of Short Stories, →ISBN, page 70
  3. Used as an intensifier.
    • The king shall joy in thy strength, O Lord ; and in thy salvation how so shall he rejoice!1771, The Book of Common Prayer
    • How so we love thee! Even UNIVAC and IBM Could never count the way.2012, H. Bundy Shaw, Play On Words: Poems, Lyrics, and Other Writings of H. Bundy Shaw, →ISBN

Origin of how so

From ellipsis of "how is that so?", and also continuing Middle English how-so, hou-so, hu se (“however, in whatsoever way”). Compare West Frisian hoesa (“how so, why”), Dutch hoezo (“how so, why”), German Low German woso (“how so, why”), German wieso (“how so, why”), Swedish hurså (“how so”). By surface analysis, how + so.

Questions about how so

What does how so mean?
How so means how?; In what way?
What part of speech is how so?
How so can be a phrase or an adverb.

Words near how so in the dictionary

  1. how now
  2. how old are you
  3. how say you
  4. how see
  5. how should I know
  6. how so
  7. how the cow ate the cabbage
  8. how the mighty have fallen
  9. how the other half live
  10. how the other half lives
  11. how the sausage gets made

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: how so (page history and authors). 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-how so.ogg.

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