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O
Onounthe fifteenth letter of the English alphabet, a vowel.
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o'
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O'
O'a prefix meaning “descendant,” in Irish family names.
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o-
o-an abridgment of ortho-.
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-o
-oa suffix occurring as the final element in informal shortenings of nouns (ammo; combo; condo; limo; promo ); -o also forms nouns, usually derogatory, for persons or things exemplifying or associated with that specified by the base noun or adjective (cheapo; pinko; sicko; weirdo; wino ).
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o.
o.abbreviationpint.
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-o-
-o-the typical ending of the first element of compounds of Greek origin (as -i- is, in compounds of Latin origin), used regularly in forming new compounds with elements of Greek origin and often used in English as a connective irrespective of etymology.
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O.
O.abbreviation(in prescriptions) a pint.
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o
onounthe 15th letter and fourth vowel of the modern English alphabet
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O'-
O'-prefix(in surnames of Irish Gaelic origin) descendant of
O
1 Americannoun
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O's,
plural
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Os,
plural
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o's,
plural
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os,
plural
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oes
plural
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the fifteenth letter of the English alphabet, a vowel.
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any spoken sound represented by the letter O or o, as in box, note, short, or love .
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something having the shape of an O .
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a written or printed representation of the letter O or o.
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a device, as a printer's type, for reproducing the letter O or o.
interjection
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(used before a name in direct address, especially in solemn or poetic language, to lend earnestness to an appeal).
Hear, O Israel!
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(used as an expression of surprise, pain, annoyance, longing, gladness, etc.)
noun
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O's
plural
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the fifteenth in order or in a series.
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the Arabic cipher; zero.
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(sometimes lowercase) the medieval Roman numeral for 11.
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Physiology. a major blood group, usually enabling a person whose blood is of this type to donate blood to persons of group O, A, B, or AB and to receive blood from persons of group O.
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Chemistry. oxygen.
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Logic. particular negative.
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a suffix occurring as the final element in informal shortenings of nouns (ammo; combo; condo; limo; promo ); -o also forms nouns, usually derogatory, for persons or things exemplifying or associated with that specified by the base noun or adjective (cheapo; pinko; sicko; weirdo; wino ).
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a suffix occurring in colloquial noun or adjective derivatives, usually grammatically isolated, as in address.
cheerio; kiddo; neato; righto.
abbreviation
abbreviation
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octavo.
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off.
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old.
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only.
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order.
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Baseball. out; outs.
abbreviation
abbreviation
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Ocean.
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octavo.
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October.
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Ohio.
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Old.
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Ontario.
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Oregon.
symbol
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chem oxygen
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a human blood type of the ABO group See universal donor
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logic a particular negative categorial proposition, such as some men are not married: often symbolized as SoP Compare A E I 2
abbreviation
noun
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the 15th letter and fourth vowel of the modern English alphabet
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any of several speech sounds represented by this letter, in English as in code, pot, cow, move, or form
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another name for nought
interjection
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a variant spelling of oh
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an exclamation introducing an invocation, entreaty, wish, etc
O God!
O for the wings of a dove!
prefix
suffix
prefix
preposition
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of O2
First recorded in 1125–75; Middle English, from Old French, from Latin ō
Origin of o'5
From Middle English; by shortening
Origin of O'6
Representing Irish ó descendant, Old Irish au
Origin of -o10
Perhaps originally the interjection O, appended to words as in -o def. 2; as a derivational suffix reinforced by clipped forms of words with -o- as a linking element (e.g., photo, stereo ), by Rom nouns ending in o, and by personal nouns such as bimbo and bozo, of obscure origin
Origin of o.11
From the Latin word octārius
Origin of -o-13
Middle English (< Old French ) < Latin < Greek
Origin of O.14
From the Latin word octārius
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Up until the Big O, I’ve lived by that rule.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
The prosecution argued that Baby O was born in good condition and was stable for 48 hours before he suddenly collapsed.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
Test your knowledge of the English language: How many words can you create with the letters P, Y, C, R, O, and T?
From Slate ● Jul. 20, 2026
The exhibition "Hkeeli ya Jnoub", or "Tell me, O South", features pictures and videos preserving the memory of southern Lebanon at the capital's Beit Beirut museum.
From Barron's ● Jul. 19, 2026
Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusts in you.
From "Across So Many Seas" by Ruth Behar
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Hobro said they were often mistaken for Portuguese man o' war but were much smaller, "brighter blue" and "generally harmless".
From BBC ● Jun. 18, 2026
“Coffee badging”—going to the office just long enough to show your face and grab a cup o’ joe—was a popular workaround.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 30, 2025
I was raised about two blocks from where you lived at the time, near Tail o’ the Pup.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 22, 2025
Any way you slice it, this week’s Slate News Quiz is a piece o’ fun.
From Slate ● Nov. 1, 2024
“A Wallace and a Stuart, feart o’ anythin’?”
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
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Former basketball player Shaquille O’ Neal is also a high-profile investor.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 19, 2025
Girls summer camp Heart O’ the Hills is just a mile north of Camp Mystic.
From Salon ● Jul. 7, 2025
But Heart O’ the Hills confirmed that its camp director, Jane Ragsdale, is one of the flood’s victims .
From Salon ● Jul. 7, 2025
Heart O' the Hills is another all-girls' camp that sits along the Guadalupe River, and it was right in the path of Friday's flood.
From BBC ● Jul. 5, 2025
After a single trip to the supermarket, the refrigerator and the cupboards fill with familiar labels: Skippy, Hood, Bumble Bee, Land O’ Lakes.
From "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri
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At week's end a Russian delegation got the signatures of the leaders of Kazakhstan on a similar agreement-to-try-t o- agree.
From Time Magazine Archive
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B-- -o-ey -o---- -o yo- -ro- old --ore le-- ---a-d --a- ---y --are -or -olle----- -or yo--o r--- --ll -all o- yo- ---r-day a- -o-r -e-.
From The Crevice by Will Grefé
Similarly, condensation of different samples of crude cresol containing varying quantities of o-, m-, and p-cresol did not yield end-products sufficiently different to justify describing them in detail.
From Synthetic Tannins by Georg Grasser
Toluene treated with fuming sulphuric acid first yields o- and p-sulphonic acids, finally o- and p-disulphonic acids, ethylbenzene at the boiling point p-ethylbenzene-sulphonic acid.
From Synthetic Tannins by Georg Grasser
It is hence possible to employ crude cresol, which contains varying quantities of the o-, m-, and p-compounds, in the manufacture of these tanning matters.
From Synthetic Tannins by Georg Grasser
Usually words ending in "-o" are masculine and those ending in "-a" are feminine, but there are many common words that break those gender rules, like "la mano," the word for "hand."
From Salon ● Sep. 26, 2022
I don't think the "-e" should eliminate the existing "-o" and the "-a."
From Salon ● Sep. 26, 2022
The -o suffix traces back to old comic strip characters with names like Knocko and Groucho.
From Slate ● Mar. 31, 2020
Knocko, Peddlo, Henpecko, and the rest became so popular that the -o suffix soon spread to words up and down the English language.
From Slate ● Mar. 31, 2020
I knew perfectly well why, but I didn’t know how -o put it.
From "Boy: Tales of a Childhood" by Roald Dahl
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This gene family was recently named KELT7, and we confirm the 8 copies present in P. o. wallikeri, but show that P. o. curtisi has 9 copies, two of which are pseudogenes.
From Nature ● Jan. 24, 2017
The Illumina-based genome assemblies for P. o. curtisi, P. o. wallikeri, and P. malariae-like were performed using MaSURCA30 for samples PocGH01, PowCR01, and PmlGA01 respectively.
From Nature ● Jan. 24, 2017
Reality is that you are giving up your family time by doing the o. t. when they need you at work.
From Time ● May 3, 2013
“If you dey come give am ticket to leave this here country, I will disappear o. I will not even stop home for pick my bag.”
From Washington Post
“Me, I want as many governors as possible to come to my own wedding o. It shows levels, serious levels,” Ranyinudo said.
From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Thus masc. -o- stems show palatal modification, e.g. corn, “horn,” plur. cyrn < *kornī; the plural ending of -u- stems, O. Gaulish -oves, gives O.W. -ou, Mid.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 5 "Cat" to "Celt" by Various
Chloe O. Davis devised writhing choreography for the six dancers who supplied some movement, in contrast to the mostly static chorus.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026
The one here involves the eight pits that were unearthed 40 years ago by workers in Sanxingdui in southern China “at the foot of the Tibetan mountains,” as narrator Jay O. Sanders tells us.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 26, 2026
News of diGenova’s appointment comes on the heels of a prosecutor withdrawing from the case, apparently due to doubts she had about prosecuting former CIA director John O. Brennan.
From Salon ● Apr. 21, 2026
On this week’s show, Dahlia Lithwick interviews constitutional and immigration scholar Anna O. Law about her forthcoming book, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship.
From Slate ● Mar. 14, 2026
From farther out on the Island came the Cheadles and the O. R. P. Schraeders and the Stonewall Jackson Abrams of Georgia and the Fishguards and the Ripley Snells.
From " The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Allow me to sing, o Muse, of a recent dinner conversation about “The Odyssey.”
From Salon ● Aug. 2, 2026
My eyes watered as the camera panned over his arm-in-arm players as they shouted the line, “Think, o beloved homeland! That heaven/gave you a soldier in each son.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026
Similarly, in June 2023, Iwan, called on protesters to stop using Yma o Hyd in opposition to housing asylum seekers at the Stradey Park Hotel in Carmarthenshire.
From BBC ● Feb. 1, 2026
Mr. Brownlee’s tenor proved rock-solid in Arturo’s demanding music, from his exquisitely relaxed, almost languid opening aria, “A te, o cara,” to some punishing high Fs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 2, 2026
During the peak of ancient astronomy, Greek astronomical tables regularly employed zero; its symbol was the lowercase omicron, o, which looks very much like our modern-day zero, though it’s probably a coincidence.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
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While some winning coaches were making their names with toughness that bordered on abuse, he urged Close to see her teams as human beings first, not X’s and O’s.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 6, 2026
Other times, for the players who preferred to see plays spelled out with Xs and O’s, he’d diagram it on paper.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2025
Other experts, including the paediatric pathologist, said that Dr Aiton's observation of hyper-inflated lungs would not explain Baby O's liver injuries.
From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2025
The prosecution pathologist concluded that there was no evidence that a needle had pierced Baby O's liver while he was alive and the paediatric pathologist we spoke to agrees.
From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2025
“I knows what them is,” he said, putting his finger on the X’s and O’s.
From "Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two" by Joseph Bruchac
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"The Dutch experience in my opinion offers a warning for Canada," Os cautioned.
From BBC ● May 15, 2026
Os would soon tour the U.S. for the first time, and at the 2023 Latin Grammy Awards, “K23” was nominated in the category of long form music video.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2026
Os, born Kenia Guadalupe Flores Osuna in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, has made an incredible leap from social media influencer to Latin Grammy-nominated pop star in under a decade.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2026
“It’s very beautiful to know that you have a partner that knows what you go through and that can give you advice from his experiences as well,” Os says.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2026
The following is a computer printout of a random sequence of Xs and Os, each with probability V2.
From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
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They eventually named their institute for an online trend that had slime enthusiasts replacing the vowels in their name with double o’s, so Kira would become “Kooroo” and slime becomes “Sloomoo.”
From Washington Post ● Jun. 30, 2022
Like other Romance languages, Spanish divides most endings of nouns into masculine o’s or feminine a’s.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 12, 2021
Speaking in the same New Orleans twang as her students—those bouncy o’s and long, lingering a’s—Foster was teaching her fifth-graders about chemical reactions.
From Slate ● Jun. 5, 2016
Plosives, or stops, convey “slower” and “bigger” — as do vowels that are voiced at the back of the throat, like the o in “token” or the double o’s in “food.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 15, 2015
The Cranes Conquer America was written at the top in Emily’s eight-year-old scrawl, back when she was into putting smiley faces inside her e’s, o’s, and o’s.
From "Book Scavenger" by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
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Dreyfus pleased his friends no better than his :oes: he irked them by not becoming a "Dreyfusard."
From Time Magazine Archive
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However thick-skinned a man may be, and protected over all by the oes triplex of self-sufficiency, he cannot escape being wounded by furious and incessant attacks.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 21, July, 1859 by Various
The colors that show best by candle-light are white, carnation, and a kind of sea-water-green; and oes, or spangs, as they are of no great cost, so they are of most glory.
From The Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon
Cymmrodedd fy llyw lluoedd beri, Nid oes rwyf eirioes, aer dyfysgu, Cymro yw haelryw o hil Beli hir, Yn herwydd i brofi.
From Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards by Evan Evans
Dywedir mai enw y gwas oedd Dafydd Hiraddug, ac iddo werthu ei hun i’r diafol, ac oherwydd hyny, ei fod yn alluog i gyflawni gweithredoedd anhygoel yn yr oes hon.
From Welsh Folk-Lore a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales by Elias Owen
A new Longevity Preparedness Index from John Hancock and MIT AgeLab os based on a survey of over 1,300 adults and focused on eight areas such as finance, home, health and community.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 12, 2025
She first broke through with 2016’s “Remonta,” an album she recorded with her former band Liniker e os Caramelows.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2025
Ambos os programas são “fundamentais para entender a expansão agrícola no Brasil e as emissões de carbono do desmatamento na Amazônia,” diz Douglas Morton, especialista em sensoriamento remoto do Goddard Space Flight Center da NASA.
From Science Magazine ● May 26, 2022
Hours later, Kelly posts bail and os released from jail in Chicago.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 18, 2021
You could talk to him about os and argos, suet and grease, croteys, fewmets and fiants, but he only looked polite.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.