Wherefor

Part of speech: adverb, conjunction, noun

Definitions

1. The underlying reason or purpose behind an action, situation, or decision that someone wants explained
2. The explanation of why something happens or why a choice was made, often in the phrase the whys and hows
3. A cause or motive that accounts for a particular action or state of affairs and makes it understandable

Etymology: "Wherefor" is a compound built from two plain English words, "where" in its old sense of "what" and "for," so its story is less about invention than about how a question once sat inside a single word. The Middle English form "wherefore" meant "for what reason; why," and "wherefor" is a variant spelling of that same meaning. The "where" half did not mean a location here but "what" or "which," so the whole sense is roughly "for what," a question about purpose. The more notable turn is that the word has largely lost its question-asking role. Its counterpart "wherefore" survives mainly in the phrase "whence and wherefore" and in the famous line from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," where Juliet asks "wherefore art thou Romeo?" and means "why," not "where." Readers who take that line to mean "where are you" are reading the modern sense of "where" back into an older question.