-wards

1. variant of -ward:

   towards; afterwards.

-wards

suffix forming adverbs

1. See -ward
   indicating direction towards Compare -ward

   to sail shorewards

   a step backwards

Spelling Note

See -ward.

Word History and Origins

Origin of -wards¹

Middle English; Old English -weardes, equivalent to -weard toward ( ward ) + -es -s ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of -wards¹

Old English -weardes towards

Example Sentences

She still wants indentured servants—excuse me, wards—to run the hospital for her, and she still wants power over all of them.

From The Daily Beast

Assertions of dominance over the wards, Dr. Edwards, and the other officers are pretty much all she has left.

From The Daily Beast

The likes of Coffman are “probably” already halfway wards of the state anyhow.

From The Daily Beast

The children teased my parents about their budding romance and my parents, in turn, fell in love with their tiny wards.

From The Daily Beast

The focus was on health care workers treating people in the isolation wards.

From The Daily Beast

Yet what an angry, disgusted woman I was when I went over this road before, lawsuit-wards, so to speak.

From Project Gutenberg

Many of the Royalists had fled to the hospitals, where, in the wards of infection, they shared the beds of the dead and the dying.

From Project Gutenberg

There is to be no sovereign power, great or small, other than American, and tribal wards are to supersede dattoships.

From Project Gutenberg

And he said to me: This chamber, which looketh toward the south shall be for the priests that watch in the wards of the temple.

From Project Gutenberg

In his capacity of Indian agent Walter Lowell often had occasion to scan the business deals of his more progressive wards.

From Project Gutenberg