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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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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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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:
God bless them for charming the good people of Boston and Miami and earning a full page feature in Wednesday's O Globo, Brazil's best-selling newspaper.
From BBC ● Jun. 25, 2026
“Our soul is in your hands, O Hussein!”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 22, 2026
“Arise, O protector of the homeland!” the crowd responded.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 22, 2026
Since January, only one shipment of Russian crude has reached Cuban ports, and the fuel refined from it has already been used, De la O said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026
So first we’d give Omi a birthday hug inside the O, and then we’d give her a little red pouch of chocolate pebbles—basically M&M’s, but each one a different pebbly shape and color.
From "Maybe He Just Likes You" by Barbara Dee
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“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
Amelie McCann said Julia Wandelt had told her she had memories of playing Ring a Ring o' Roses with her and feeding her brother Sean.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2025
These sea snails are also voracious predators themselves and feast upon free-floating hydrozoan such as Velella velella and Portuguese man o’ war.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2025
Any way you slice it, this week’s Slate News Quiz is a piece o’ fun.
From Slate ● Nov. 1, 2024
“She’ll happen do better for him nor ony o’ t’ grand ladies.”
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
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Former basketball player Shaquille O’ Neal is also a high-profile investor.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 19, 2025
The castle, near John O' Groats, is the most northerly inhabited castle in Scotland and the property and its gardens are run as a visitor attraction in summer months.
From BBC ● Oct. 27, 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
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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They all stare at one another, and so go off, crying O, o, o, o- to the Emperor's Pallace.
From The Life and Death of Doctor Faustus Made into a Farce by Mountfort, William
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 Grasser, Georg
The text of the larger o- fuda is often accompanied by curious pictures or symbolic illustrations.
From In Ghostly Japan by Hearn, Lafcadio
Of the three isomeric xylenes o- and m-xylene dissolve in concentrated, p-xylene in fuming sulphuric acid only.
From Synthetic Tannins by Grasser, Georg
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
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
The -o suffix traces back to old comic strip characters with names like Knocko and Groucho.
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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The P. o. wallikeri and the P. o. curtisi chromosomes were aligned against each other, as were the P. malariae and P. malariae-like chromosomes.
From Nature ● Jan. 24, 2017
Gene models were then manually curated for both the P. malariae and P. o. curtisi reference genomes, using Artemis40 and the Artemis Comparison Tool41.
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
“Yes o. Are you the person that will marry me? Meanwhile I told Don I am going out with you, so make sure you don’t go anywhere that he might go.”
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
And if he’s going to be a senator, he says, he needs to lock down a Jackie O. – not a Marilyn.
From Salon ● Jul. 6, 2026
Mr. Yagoda is the author of the novel “Alias O. Henry.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
Crump said Thursday he was teaming up with Carl Douglas, a civil rights attorney known for representing O. J. Simpson during his 1995 murder trial, to explore a lawsuit against the county.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 14, 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
Back home, the O. J. Simpson trial was in full swing, and there were people who surrendered their entire lunch hours watching it, then taped the rest so they could watch more at night.
From "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom
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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
Welsh folk singer Dafydd Iwan says he has received "very personal" and "nasty" comments after urging organisers of a right-wing protest to stop using his song Yma o Hyd.
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
Marvell and SoftBank didn’t immediately respond t o Barron’s requests for comment early on Thursday.
From Barron's ● Nov. 6, 2025
It’s her own medal of Saint Christopher—protector o travelers, guardian against storms, holy death, and toothaches.
From "A Heart in a Body in the World" by Deb Caletti
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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
Does the olfactory exhilaration also enhance play-calling, amplifying one’s grasp of X’s and O’s?
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 12, 2026
Which raises the obvious question - if the prosecution were wrong about Baby O's liver injuries, then why did he die?
From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2025
There has been another explanation for Baby O's death.
From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2025
But before he spoke he picked up a piece of yellow chalk and drew five X’s and O’s up on the board.
From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy
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"The Dutch experience in my opinion offers a warning for Canada," Os cautioned.
From BBC ● May 15, 2026
When Os first launched as a singer in 2018, some immediately took aim at her dance moves and the digitally augmented sound of her voice.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2026
Another hurdle that Os had to overcome in her career is an ongoing stigma placed on influencers-turned-pop stars.
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
“Brother, that water felt good,” she said, drawing out the word “good” so it sounded like it had about fifteen Os in it.
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
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Like other Romance languages, Spanish divides most endings of nouns into masculine o’s or feminine a’s.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 12, 2021
Twitter’s closed captioning wrote it out twice, with each ¡Gol! featuring 27 o’s.
From Slate ● Jun. 17, 2018
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
Texting and Millennials The phone holds a million x’s and o’s.
From Forbes ● Jun. 5, 2013
“Because, see, we’re in Spanish class with all the a's and o’s at the end, and Troy just comes up with this name, Ema, just like that, and boom, it stuck. You see?”
From "Shelter (Book One): A Mickey Bolitar Novel" by Harlan Coben
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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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I was taking a lesson in Welsh pronunciation some time ago, and uttered the phrase "yn oes oesodd"—from ages to ages.
From Far Off Things by Machen, Arthur
Ir wyfi yn meddwl nad oes neb a ryfygei gymmeryd y fath orchest arno.
From Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards by Evans, Evan
The poet "mouthing out his hollow oes and aes" is, we are told, a good description of Tennyson's tone and manner of reading.
From The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Collins, John Churton
Nad oes wedd na moes, masw ynyd yw’n gwlad, Nad oes mad eithr gwad a gwyd.
From Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards by Evans, Evan
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
The os in his calculations were only intermediaries, crutches that vanished miraculously by the end of the computation.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
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Newton disliked infinitesimals, the little os in his fluxion equations that sometimes acted like zeros and sometimes like nonzero numbers.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
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In the 19 3 os, track experts were beginning to toss around the idea of a four-minute mile.
From "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand
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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.