ask

UK/ɑːsk/US/æsk/

verbA15 meanings One of the most common words in English · #93 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: asked, asks, asking

To ask is to put a question to someone. You ask the time, ask where the toilets are, ask your teacher to say it again.

It also means to request, and then it takes FOR: ask for help, ask for the bill, ask for a pay rise. The person comes straight after the verb with no preposition, so it is ask me and ask your father — 'ask to me' is a mistake worth killing early. Ask can invite (they asked us to dinner) and it can name a price (he is asking two hundred for the bike). British speech has turned it into a noun as well: that's a big ask means what is being requested is a lot. The two halves split cleanly — you ask a question, you ask for a thing.

Definitions of ask

1verbaskTo put a question to someone.A1~41%
“Ask her what time the train leaves.”
synonyms: enquire, query
2verbrequestTo request something.A1~53%
“He asked for more time and got a week.”
synonyms: request
3verbinviteTo invite someone somewhere.A2~2%
“They asked us to dinner on Sunday.”
4verbnameTo name a price for something you are selling.B2~2%
“They are asking four hundred for a bike worth two.”
5nounlargeSomething being requested, especially something large — everyday British speech.C1~2%
“Finishing it by Friday is a big ask.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

ask for trouble — Behave in a way that invites problems you could have avoided.
if you ask me — Said before giving your own opinion.
don't ask me — I have no idea.

Where it comes from

Ask runs back through Middle English asken to Old English ascian, and further to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning to wish or to request. Middle English wrote it two ways, asken and axen, with the s and k swapped, and the second spelling is as old as the first. The demanding cousins are still alive elsewhere: Dutch eisen, to demand, and German heischen, to request.

Middle English
asken
English, today
ask

From Middle English asken. From Middle English asken, axen, from Old English āscian, from Proto-West Germanic aiskōn, from Proto-Indo-European h₂eys- (“to wish; request”). Cognate with stq aaskje (“to ask, demand, require”), West Frisian easkje (“to ask, demand, require”), Dutch eisen (“to demand, require”), German heischen (“to ask, request, implore”), Russian иска́ть, Sanskrit इच्छति (whence Hindi ईछना.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Everyday Verbs

Practise this word

ask in the wild

The United Kingdom and some other countries have special question times for asking questions to the Prime Minister.
Question time
In practice, the questions asked in question time are sometimes pre-arranged by party leaders, although questions are usually without notice.
Question time
An excessively bold person could aggressively ask for money, or persistently push someone to fulfill a request.
Boldness
A prayer request is a request made by one person asking another to pray for a specific need or concern on their behalf.
Intercession
When Kumbhakarna asked for his boon, his tongue was tied by the goddess Saraswati, who acted on Indra's request.
Kumbhakarna

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of ask

1verbaskTo put a question to someone.A1~41%

“Ask her what time the train leaves.”

synonyms: enquire, query

2verbrequestTo request something.A1~53%

“He asked for more time and got a week.”

synonyms: request

3verbinviteTo invite someone somewhere.A2~2%

“They asked us to dinner on Sunday.”

4verbnameTo name a price for something you are selling.B2~2%

“They are asking four hundred for a bike worth two.”

5nounlargeSomething being requested, especially something large — everyday British speech.C1~2%

“Finishing it by Friday is a big ask.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.