Word.ws English Dictionary

-cy

/-si/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/-sɪj/

-cy suffix: used to form nouns of state, condition or quality.

Suffix

-cy (noun-forming suffix, countable and uncountable, plural -cies)

  1. (non-productive) Used to form nouns of state, condition or quality.
    • private + -cy → privacy
    • frequent + -cy → frequency
    Synonyms:
    -ness, -ity, -itude, -th
  2. (non-productive) Used to form nouns of rank or office.
    • president + -cy → presidency
    • abbot + -cy → abbacy
    Synonyms:
    -ate

Synonyms of -cy

Forms of -cy

plural-cies

Origin of -cy

From Anglo-Norman -cie, ultimately from Latin -cia, -tia, Ancient Greek -κια (-kia), -τια (-tia), originally variants of Latin -ia and Ancient Greek -ια (-ia), -ία (-ía) or -εια (-eia). Original loan words like pharmacy and papacy could have formed the model.

Questions about -cy

What does -cy mean?
-cy means used to form nouns of state, condition or quality.
What part of speech is -cy?
-cy is a suffix.
How do you pronounce -cy?
-cy is pronounced /-si/.

Words near -cy in the dictionary

  1. -cule
  2. -culum
  3. -culus
  4. -curium
  5. -curonium
  6. -cy
  7. -cycline
  8. -cyte
  9. -cytic
  10. -cytomatous
  11. -d

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -cy (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.

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