-wards

1. variant of -ward:

   towards; afterwards.

-wards

suffix forming adverbs

1. See -ward
   indicating direction towards Compare -ward

   to sail shorewards

   a step backwards

Spelling Note

See -ward.

Word History and Origins

Origin of -wards¹

Middle English; Old English -weardes, equivalent to -weard toward ( ward ) + -es -s ¹

Word History and Origins

Origin of -wards¹

Old English -weardes towards

Example Sentences

She still wants indentured servants—excuse me, wards—to run the hospital for her, and she still wants power over all of them.

From The Daily Beast

Assertions of dominance over the wards, Dr. Edwards, and the other officers are pretty much all she has left.

From The Daily Beast

The likes of Coffman are “probably” already halfway wards of the state anyhow.

From The Daily Beast

The children teased my parents about their budding romance and my parents, in turn, fell in love with their tiny wards.

From The Daily Beast

The focus was on health care workers treating people in the isolation wards.

From The Daily Beast

Yet what an angry, disgusted woman I was when I went over this road before, lawsuit-wards, so to speak.

From Project Gutenberg

Many of the Royalists had fled to the hospitals, where, in the wards of infection, they shared the beds of the dead and the dying.

From Project Gutenberg

There is to be no sovereign power, great or small, other than American, and tribal wards are to supersede dattoships.

From Project Gutenberg

And he said to me: This chamber, which looketh toward the south shall be for the priests that watch in the wards of the temple.

From Project Gutenberg

In his capacity of Indian agent Walter Lowell often had occasion to scan the business deals of his more progressive wards.

From Project Gutenberg

Words That Use -wards

What does -wards mean?

The suffix –wards is used to mean “in the direction of,” either in time or space. It is often used in everyday and technical terms.

The form –wards comes from Old English –weardes, meaning “towards.”

What are variants of –wards?

The suffix –wards is more common in British English. In North American English, the variant –ward, as in toward, is more commonly used. Want to know more? Read our Words That Use article on –ward.

Examples of -wards

One example of a word that features the suffix –wards is downwards, or downward, “from a higher to a lower place, level, etc.”

The first part of the word indicates the direction. In this case, down– means “from higher to lower.” The suffix –wards means “toward” or “in the direction of.” Downwards literally means “in the down direction.”

What are some words that use the equivalent of the combining form –wards in Middle or Old English?

• afterwards
• forwards
• towards
• upwards
• westwards

What are some other forms that –wards may be commonly confused with?

• -ard
• -ware

Not every word that ends with the exact letters –ward or –wards, such as reward or coward, is necessarily using the combining form –ward to denote “direction.” Learn why coward means “lacking courage” at our entry for the word.

Break it down!

Given the meaning of the suffix –wards, what does upwards literally mean?