Word.ws English Dictionary

something

Syllables: some·thing/ˈsʌm.θɪŋ/[ˈsɐm(p)θɪŋ]

something pronoun: an uncertain or unspecified thing; one thing.

Pronoun

something (indefinite pronoun)

  1. (indefinite, pronoun) An uncertain or unspecified thing; one thing.
    • I must have forgotten to pack something, but I can't think what.
    • I have something for you in my bag.
    Synonyms:
    sth
  2. (colloquial, indefinite, pronoun) A quality to a moderate degree.
    • The performance was something of a disappointment.
    • That child is something of a genius.
  3. (colloquial, indefinite, pronoun) A talent or quality that is difficult to specify.
    • She has a certain something.
    Synonyms:
    je ne sais quoi
  4. (colloquial, indefinite, often, pronoun) Somebody who or something that is superlative or notable in some way.
    • He's really something! I've never heard such a great voice.
    • She's quite something. I can't believe she would do such a mean thing.

Adjective

something (not comparable)

  1. Having a characteristic that the speaker cannot specify.
    • She was so something that she cried all the way home.1965 January 30, Lou Sullivan, Diary
    • "Very poetic." They came to a halt before the outer door. "It's very something," Rusty said wistfully. "How do you do it?"1986, Marie Nicole, Foxy Lady, →ISBN, page 20

Adverb

something (not comparable)

  1. (degree) Somewhat; to a degree.
    • The baby looks something like his father.
    • Angelo. Yet giue leaue (my Lord,)
      That we may bring you something on the wayc. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  2. (colloquial, especially) Used to adverbialise a following adjective
    • I miss them something terrible/rotten. (I miss them terribly)
    • You can't thrash when you have rheumatic fever – though you want to something awful, Mrs. White says.1913, Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna, L.C. Page, →OCLC

Verb

something (third-person singular simple present somethings, present participle somethinging, simple past and past participle somethinged)

  1. (colloquial) Designates an action whose name is forgotten by, unknown or unimportant to the user, e.g. from words of a song.
    • He didn’t apply for it for a long time, and then there was a hitch about it, and it was somethinged—vetoed, I believe she said.1890, William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&vid=ISBN0140439234&id=IOZeJi7U4eEC&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&sig=LW2P-uKmoZabe70ZKnIHIMQLXlw
    • She hovers over the something somethinging and awkwardly lowers her bulk.2003, George Angel, “Allegoady,” in Juncture, Lara Stapleton and Veronica Gonzalez edd. http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&vid=ISBN1887128913&id=qB-D32yV1VAC&pg=PA161&lpg=PA161&sig=9AYyYLA-M...

Noun

something (plural somethings)

  1. An object whose nature is yet to be defined.
    • Yea, ’t is true; I ’d know thee by thine eyen, that are gray, and thoughtful, and dark with a something that lies behind the colour of them,—and shining by the light of a lamp lit somewhere within.1903, Florence Converse, Long Will: A Romance, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, page 138
    • From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much.[…] But viewed from high up in one of the growing number of skyscrapers in Sri Lanka’s capital, it is clear that something extraordinary is happening: China is creating a shipping hub just 200 miles from India’s southern tip.2013 June 8, “The new masters and commanders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 52
  2. An object whose name is forgotten by, unknown or unimportant to the user, e.g., from words of a song. Also used to refer to an object earlier indefinitely referred to as 'something' (pronoun sense).
    • What was the something the pilot saw, the something worth killing for?1999, Nicholas Clapp, The Road to Ubar http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&vid=ISBN0395957869&id=3ikdzDKkQ04C&pg=PA104&lpg=PA104&sig=UNimtwdgeC_w_wqGXfa4LsCDik8
    • Moreover, in all of our experience with these sense impressions, we never lose sight of the fact that they are but incidental facts of our mental existence, and that there is a Something Within which is really the Subject of these sense reports—a Something to which these reports are presented, and...2004, Theron Q Dumont, The Master Mind http://books.google.com/books?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&vid=ISBN0766185435&id=-n_jW7BVfawC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&sig=ou-CrIyWbKyZQ0s3q0uaJTiHdsI

something meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

something in Hindi

unspecified object
कुछ kuch

something in Tamil

unspecified object
ஏதோ ētō

something in Marathi

something
काही kāhī

something in Urdu

unspecified object
کچھ kuch
More languagesFewer languages
something in Bengali
কিছু একটা kichu ekṭa
something in Telugu
ఏదో ēdō
something in Malayalam
എന്തോ ഒരു കാര്യം, ഏറെക്കുറെ, വ്യക്തമാക്കാൻ വിഷമമുള്ള ഒരു ഗുണം, ഒരു പരിധിവരെ
something in Kannada
ಯಾವುದೋ, ಏನೋ, ಒಂದಷ್ಟು ಪ್ರಮಾಣ, ಒಂದು ಭಾಗ
something in Punjabi
ਕੁੱਝ, ਕੁੱਝ ਤਾਂ
something in Gujarati
કશું kaśũ, કાંઈ kā̃ī
something in Odia
କଥା kathā
something in Sanskrit
वक्रगामिन् vakragāmin
something in Assamese
কিবা এটা kiba eta, কিবা kiba
something in Nepali
केही kehī
something in Pashto
څه śə
something in Arabic
شَيْء šayʔ
something in Malay
sesuatu
something in Persian
چیزی čizi
something in Thai
บางสิ่ง baang-sìng
something in Vietnamese
cái gì, gì, một cái gì đó
something in Myanmar
တစ်ခုခု tachku.hku., တစ်စုံတစ်ခု taccumtachku.

Examples of something in a sentence

  • I have a feeling something good is going to happen today.
  • The answer to four down is P something T something Y.
  • She looked thirty-something. (anything from thirty-one to thirty-nine years old)
  • The car has something of a history attached to it.
  • Some marmosets are less than six inches tall. —Well, isn't that something?
  • Seeing the British establishment struggle with the financial sector is like watching an alcoholic who still resists the idea that something drastic needs to happen for him to turn his life around.2013 June 28, Joris Luyendijk, “Our banks are out of control”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 3, page 21:

All 40 example sentences with something

Synonyms of something

Forms of something

Pronoun
alternative pronunciation-spellingsumthing
alternative pronunciation-spellingsomethang
alternative pronunciation-spellingsumfin
alternative pronunciation-spellingsumfin'
alternative pronunciation-spellingsumn
alternative pronunciation-spellingsumpin
alternative pronunciation-spellingsumting
alternative pronunciation-spellingsumthang
alternative pronunciation-spellingsumfink
alternative abbreviationsth
alternative abbreviationsth.
alternative abbreviationsthg
alternative abbreviationsmtg
alternative abbreviationsmth
alternative abbreviationsmtn
alternative form (obsolete)somthing
Verb
third-person singular presentsomethings
present participlesomethinging
past participlesomethinged
pastsomethinged

Plural of something: somethings

Origin of something

From Middle English somþyng, some-thing, som thing, sum thinge, sum þinge, from Old English sum þing (literally “some thing”), equivalent to some + thing. Compare Old English āwiht (“something”, literally “some thing, any thing”), Swedish någonting (“something”, literally “some thing, any thing”).

Words formed from something

Phrases with something

161 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with something

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about something

What does something mean?
Something means an uncertain or unspecified thing; one thing.
What is something in Hindi?
Something in Hindi is कुछ (kuch). See Something meaning in Hindi.
How do you use something in a sentence?
I have a feeling something good is going to happen today.
What part of speech is something?
Something can be a pronoun, an adjective, an adverb or a verb.
How do you pronounce something?
Something is pronounced /ˈsʌm.θɪŋ/.

Words near something in the dictionary

  1. somesthetically
  2. somesthetics
  3. somesuch
  4. somethang
  5. somethin'
  6. something
  7. something and nothing
  8. something awful
  9. something bad
  10. something dreadful
  11. something else

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: something (page history and authors); काही (Marathi) (page history and authors); something (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); something (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); something (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); કશું (Gujarati) (page history and authors); କଥା (Odia) (page history and authors); वक्रगामिन् (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); কিবা (Assamese) (page history and authors); केही (Nepali) (page history and authors); څه (Pashto) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-something.wav, en-us-something.ogg.

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