Other forms: honors, honored, honoring
To honour somebody is to show them deep public respect — a memorial, a title, a minute's silence. To honour a promise or a contract is to keep it, and that second sense is the commoner one in business and law.
The spelling splits by country: honour in British English, honor in American, and the same split runs through honourable, honorary and honoured. Note that honorary keeps a single u-less spelling on both sides. As a noun, honour covers the abstract quality, the specific award, and the polite formula — it is an honour to be here, Your Honour to a judge. In her honour and in honour of are the standard patterns for a thing done to mark somebody.
1verbhonorTo show deep public respect for somebody.~51%
“The town honoured her with a plaque on the library.”
synonyms: respect, commemorate
2verbkeepTo keep to an agreement or a promise.~2%
“The bank refused to honour the cheque.”
3noungreatGreat respect, or the quality that earns it.~4%
“He behaved with honour throughout.”
4noungivenSomething given to mark respect, such as an award or a title.~43%
“The list of honours is published twice a year.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 23 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
honor is a way of showing respect.
Also accepted in games: honour
Latin honor covered public office, respect and the marks of it all at once, which is why the English word still does three jobs. Honesty comes from the same root, through honestus, meaning honourable — so honest originally meant respectable rather than truthful.
Latin
honor
Old French
honor
Anglo-Norman
honour
Middle English
honour
English, today
honor
Built from
From Middle English honour, honor, honur, from Anglo-Norman honour, honur, from Old French honor, from Latin honor. Displaced native Old English hād and Middle English menske (“honor, dignity among men”) (though survived in descendant mense (“property, civility, etc.”)), from Old Norse menskr (“honor”). The verb is from Middle English honouren, honuren (“to honor”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA