How do you use the word "how" in a sentence?

Here are real-life examples of using "how": How many close friends do you have? How long did you stay?

How Meaning

/haʊ/

Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.

Definition

advTo what degree or extent.

advIn what manner

Sentence Examples

How many close friends do you have?

How long did you stay?

I do not know how to solve this difficult math problem.

CEFR Practice Quiz

She could not figure out ____ to solve the difficult puzzle without instructions.

CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)

Can you please explain to me ____ this complex computer program actually works?

Word Origin & History

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kʷ- Proto-Indo-European *kʷís Proto-Germanic *hwō Old English hū Middle English how English how From Middle English how, hou, hu, hwu, from Old English hū, from Proto-West Germanic *hwō, from Proto-Germanic *hwō (“through what, how”), from the same root as hwæt (“who, what”). /hw/ > /h/ due to wh-cluster reduction in Old English; compare who, which underwent this change later, and thus is spelt wh (Middle English spelling of /hw/) but pronounced /h/ (it previously had a different vowel, hence avoided the spelling and sound change in Old English). Vowel change per Great Vowel Shift. Akin to Scots hoo, foo (“how”), North Frisian ho, hü, hur (“how”), Saterland Frisian wo (“how”), West Frisian hoe (“how”), Dutch hoe (“how”), Low German ho, wo, wu (“how”), German wie (“how”), Swedish hur (“how”). See who and compare why.

Literary Quotations & Historical Citations

"No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly wait." — 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 46:

"How damaged is her self-esteem?" — 2013, Diane Sullivan Everstine, Louis Everstine, Strategic Interventions for People in Crisis, Trauma, and Disaster: Revised Edition, Routledge, →ISBN:

"Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.[…]But as a foundation for analysis it is highly subjective: it rests on difficult decisions about what counts as a territory, what counts as output and how to value it. Indeed, economists are still tweaking it." — 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

"How do you sell your brandy? We sell it by the gallon, and not by the bottle." — 1831, Nicolas Wanostrocht, A Grammar of the French Language: With Practical Exercises, page 372:

"How does God appear in these religions? Hinduism has a thousand faces for God, some likable, some horrible. You can pick and choose your preferred image. Buddhism does not even have an image of God, but concentrates on man." — 2005, Tim Stafford, Knowing the Face of God, Revised Edition: Deepening Your Personal Relationship with God, Wipf and Stock Publishers, →ISBN, page 191:

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