/wɜːr/
[verb] The past tense plural and past subjunctive form of 'to be,' used to describe what existed, happened, or was true in the past, or to talk about imaginary or uncertain situations.
'Were' is over a thousand years old and comes from a completely different ancient root than 'was' — the two words were never related.
The word 'were' belongs to one of the most ancient and irregular verbs in the English language: the verb 'to be.' What makes 'be' so unusual is that it is actually built from three entirely separate Proto-Indo-European roots, each contributing different forms. 'Am' and 'is' come from one root, 'be' comes from another, and 'was' and 'were' come from a third. This explains why the forms of 'to be' look so wildly different from one another — they are, in a very real sense, three different verbs stitched together over thousands of years.
The specific root behind 'were' is the Proto-Indo-European root *wes-, meaning 'to remain' or 'to dwell.' This ancient root travelled into Proto-Germanic as *wesan-, giving the idea of being or staying somewhere. From Proto-Germanic, it passed into Old English as wesan, producing forms like wæs (singular past, the ancestor of modern 'was') and wǣron (plural past, the direct ancestor of modern 'were'). Old English speakers used wǣron for groups — 'they were' — just as we do today.
Over time, wǣron was gradually smoothed and shortened. The long vowel shifted, the ending simplified, and by Middle English the form had become were, which looks almost identical to what we write today. The word's sound and spelling have been remarkably stable for the last six or seven centuries, making 'were' one of the more conservative survivors of the enormous changes that transformed Old English into the language we now speak.
One of the most interesting things about 'were' is its role in the subjunctive mood — the grammatical form used to describe hypothetical, imagined, or wished-for situations. In modern English, the subjunctive has mostly disappeared, but 'were' is one of the last clear survivors. When we say 'If I were you' or 'I wish it were true,' we are using a subjunctive form that dates back to Old English. In these cases, 'were' doesn't describe something real — it describes something imagined — and it kept this separate function even as the subjunctive faded almost everywhere else in English.
The same Proto-Indo-European root *wes- quietly spread into other European languages, sometimes in surprising disguises. It gave Sanskrit vasati, meaning 'he dwells,' and it contributed to Old Norse vera, meaning 'to be,' which reinforced the word's use after Viking settlers mixed with English speakers during the early medieval period. The Norse influence may even have helped 'were' survive in northern English dialects at a time when other forms were competing with it. Today, 'were' sits at the very heart of English — a tiny word carrying the weight of human existence, identity, and imagination across more than a millennium.