"why" can be compared to an old Latin form qui, an ablative form, meaning how. Today "why" is used as a question word to ask the reason or purpose of something.
8 1) Please tell me why is it like that. [grammatically incorrect unless the punctuation is changed. Please tell me: Why is it like that? The question: "Why is [etc.]" is a question form in English: Why is the sky blue? Why is it that children require so much attention? Why is it [or some thing] like that?
Good explanation of why it's optional in this case, although I'm not convinced that reason is the only reasonable antecedent of why. For example, the explanation why is a common usage, and I don't think you can freely substitute that in that case either. (Perhaps it's already a contraction of the explanation of why?)
Since we can say "Why can we grow taller?", "Why cannot we grow taller?" is a logical and properly written negative. We don't say "Why we can grow taller?" so the construct should not be "Why we cannot grow taller?" The reason is that auxiliaries should come before the subject to make an interrogative.
I know it originates from "head shrinking", but it doesn't help me a lot to understand the etymology. Why are psychiatrists called that? Is it like "my head is swollen [from anguish, misery, stress...
Why does English use "No." as an abbreviation for "Number"? It's a preserved scribal abbreviation like the ampersand & (formed by eliding the letters of et to mean and). The OED has it in use from the 8th century, based on the ablative numerō used for an implied preposition in: X in or according to number. It also gets used by the French based on numéro, which produced Wiktionary's erroneous ...
The question is: why did the English adapt the name pineapple from Spanish (which originally meant pinecone in English) while most European countries eventually adapted the name ananas, which came from the Tupi word nanas (also meaning pineapple).
Is it grammatically correct to use one-word sentence "Why?" as "Why do you ask?", for example in such context: – Did you visit that shop yesterday? – Yes. Why?
Why should we capitalize the first person pronoun 'I' even when it does not appear at the beginning of a sentence? Why is it not the case for other pronouns?
