-ary

UK/ə.ɹi/US/ə.ɹi/

-ary suffix: of or pertaining to. Adjectival suffix appended to various words, often nouns, to produce an adjective form. Often added to words of Latin origin, but used with other words also.

Suffix

-ary

Of or pertaining to. Adjectival suffix appended to various words, often nouns, to produce an adjective form. Often added to words of Latin origin, but used with other words also.
- devolution + -ary → devolutionary
Synonyms:

-al, -ar, -ese, -ic, -id, -ish, -like, -oid, -ory, -ous
Ending of some substantives borrowed or inherited from Latin and French.
- dictionary, plenipotentiary
Having the specified arity.

Synonyms:

-adic

-ary meaning in Arabic

-ary in Arabic

of or pertaining to: ـِيّ -iyy

Synonyms of -ary

2 more synonymsFewer synonyms

-y
-adic

All synonyms of -ary

Origin of -ary

Inherited from Middle English -arie, a back-formation from Latin and French-borrowed adjectives ending respectively in -ārius and -aire (more rarely from Latin adjectives in -āris: see exemplary and lapidary). Doublet of -ar, -eer, -ier, and -yer; see also the related -arian.

Words formed from -ary

Questions about -ary

What does -ary mean?: -ary means of or pertaining to. Adjectival suffix appended to various words, often nouns, to produce an adjective form. Often added to words of Latin origin, but used with other words also.
What is -ary in Arabic?: -ary in Arabic is ـِيّ (-iyy). See -ary meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is -ary?: -ary is a suffix.
How do you pronounce -ary?: -ary is pronounced /ə.ɹi/ (UK).

Words near -ary in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: -ary (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “-ary.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-ary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.