how's

1. 1
   contractionabbreviationcontraction

   Contraction of how is.

   How's the new apartment working out for you?

   How's traffic on the highway this morning?

   Note

   Here 's carries is, either as the main verb (How's the soup?) or as the helper in a progressive question (How's it going?). The same spelling also stands for the "has" contraction and the "does" contraction, so the word that follows decides. A noun or an -ing form points to is, a past participle points to has, and a bare verb points to does.

2. 2
   contractionabbreviationcontraction

   Contraction of how has.

   How's she been since she moved to Denver?

   How's the garden held up through the heat wave?

   Note

   Present-perfect questions use this reading: How's she been, how's the garden held up. A past participle after 's is the signal, since the same spelling otherwise reads as is. It belongs to speech and relaxed writing. In edited prose, how has is usually spelled out in full.

3. 3
   contractionabbreviationcontraction

   Contraction of how does.

   How's that figure into your plans for the summer?

   How's the new policy affect part-time employees?

   Note

   Speech reduces does to 's in questions like How's that work?, where a bare verb follows. Readers expect is or has after how's, so on the page this reading can look like a mistake. It is at home in casual talk and rarely appears in edited prose, where how does is the safer choice.

4. 4
   noun

   Alternative spelling of hows.

   The manual covers the how's of installation but skips the reasons behind each step.

   Her presentation answered every one of the how's the board had raised.

   Note

   This is a plural, not a contraction: the apostrophe marks how used as a noun, as in the whys and hows of a problem. Alva Myrdal writes of "the why's and how's" of the arms race in The Game of Disarmament (1977), pluralizing why the same way. The apostrophe spelling appears mainly in informal writing, and most style guides prefer the plain form hows.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4