Word.ws English Dictionary

-ery

/əɹi/

-ery suffix: added to occupational etc. nouns to form other nouns meaning the "art, craft, or practice of.".

Suffix (1)

-ery (noun-forming suffix, countable and uncountable, plural -eries)

  1. Added to occupational etc. nouns to form other nouns meaning the "art, craft, or practice of."
    • midwife + -ery → midwifery
    • cook + -ery → cookery
  2. Added to verbs to form nouns meaning "place of" (an art, craft, or practice).
    • bake + -ery → bakery
    • distill + -ery → distillery
    Synonyms:
    -ing
  3. Added to nouns to form other nouns meaning "a class, group, or collection of."
    • crock + -ery → crockery
    • hose + -ery → hosiery
    Synonyms:
    -age, -ing
  4. Added to nouns to form other nouns meaning "behavior characteristic of."
    • snob + -ery → snobbery
    • tomfool + -ery → tomfoolery

Suffix (2)

-ery (adjective-forming suffix, comparative more -ery, superlative most -ery)

  1. (rare) Forming adjectives.
    • My neighbors’ children play with me. / They come for me to ease their woes, / Bleedery stumpings of the toes, / Splinters in fingers, at whose base / Angels have left their kissery trace; / Skinned elbows and such bruisery rings, / Or bumpery dots from wood bees’ stings.1917, The Christian Advocate, volume XCII, New York, N.Y., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 559, column 1

Synonyms of -ery

Forms of -ery

plural-eries
alternative form-erie
alternative form-ry
comparativemore -ery
superlativemost -ery

Origin of -ery

From Middle English -erie, from Anglo-Norman -erie, which is from -ier + -ie; a suffix forming abstract nouns. The suffix first occurs in loans from Old French into Middle English, but becomes productive within English by the 16th century, in some instances properly a combination of the agent suffix -er with -y as in bakery, brewery, but also as a single suffix in terms like slavery, machinery (which are not derived from slaver or machiner). By surface analysis, -er + -y.

Alteration of -y.

Questions about -ery

What does -ery mean?
-ery means added to occupational etc. nouns to form other nouns meaning the "art, craft, or practice of.".
What part of speech is -ery?
-ery is a suffix.
How do you pronounce -ery?
-ery is pronounced /əɹi/.

Words near -ery in the dictionary

  1. -erizing
  2. -ern
  3. -eroo
  4. -eroonie
  5. -ers
  6. -ery
  7. -es
  8. -esce
  9. -esced
  10. -escence
  11. -escent

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -ery (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: “-ery.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-ery. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.