Word.ws English Dictionary

whies and wherefores

whies and wherefores is the rare spelling of whys and wherefores.

Meaning of whys and wherefores

Noun

whys and wherefores pl (normally plural, singular why and wherefore)

  1. (plural, plural-normally, set phrase) The reasons or motivations for a fact, action, or decision, especially the complete set of such reasons or motivations.
    • I can no more tell you the whys and wherefores of myself than I can lift myself up by the waistband and carry myself into the next county.1887, George Bernard Shaw, chapter 5, in An Unsocial Socialist
    Synonyms:
    explanation

Forms of whies and wherefores

singularwhy and wherefore

Questions about whies and wherefores

What is whies and wherefores the rare spelling of?
Whies and wherefores is the rare spelling of whys and wherefores.

Words near whies and wherefores in the dictionary

  1. Whiddon
  2. Whiddons
  3. whids
  4. whied
  5. whies
  6. whies and wherefores
  7. whiff
  8. whiff waff
  9. whiff whaff
  10. whiff whaffs
  11. whiff-waff

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whies and wherefores (page history and authors); whys and wherefores (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.

Last updated:

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