Word.ws English Dictionary

-es

/-ɪz/US/-iːz/

-es suffix: ch, when pronounced as /tʃ/: glitch→glitches (but psych→psychs).

Suffix (1)

-es

  1. ch, when pronounced as /tʃ/: glitch→glitches (but psych→psychs)
  2. j: hajj→hajjes (j is only final in loan words raj, hajj)
  3. s: bus→buses, Jones → Joneses; yes → yeses.
  4. x: box→boxes
  5. z: buzz → buzzes, waltz → waltzes
  6. sh: ash→ashes
  7. Used to form the regular plural of nouns that end in a consonant (or qu) + y
    • lady→ladies, soliloquy→soliloquies (but key→keys)
  8. Used to form the plural of some nouns that end in a consonant + o
    • tomato→tomatoes (but soprano→sopranos)
  9. (dialectal) Used to form the regular plural of nouns that end in /sp/, /st/, /sk/
    • post→postes /ˈpəʊstɪz/, /ˈpoʊstɪz/ (standard posts)

Suffix (2)

-es

  1. that end in (t)ch pronounced as /tʃ/: impeach→impeaches (but psych→psychs)
  2. that end in (s)s: miss → misses, yes → yesses; bus → buses; buss → busses
  3. that end in x: tax → taxes
  4. that end in (z)z: fizz→fizzes
  5. that end in consonant + o in some cases: go→goes (but radio→radios)
  6. that end in sh: wish→wishes
  7. that end in consonant (or qu) + y: cry→cries (but buy→buys)

Suffix (3)

-es

  1. (idiomatic, obsolete) Possessive marker; see -s, -'s.
    • ... whereupon king Henry his sonne, as it may appeare by the later clause of this chapter, recouered diuers eschet[s] of lande within this Realme holden by Normans, whiche after they began to adhere to the French king, the kinges enimy[…]1573, An exposition of the kinges prerogative, collected out of the great Abridgement of Justice Fitzherbert and other olde writers of the lawes of England, page 38

Origin of -es

From Middle English -es, from Old English -as. More at -s.

From Middle English -es, -is, from Old English -es, -as, Northern variants of -est, -ast (second person singular indicative ending). Replaced Middle English -eth, from Old English -eþ, -aþ. The falling together of the second and third person singular verb forms in Old English is believed to be due to Scandinavian influence, where the employment of the same verbal endings for both 2nd and 3rd singular indicative follows a similar pattern to that seen in Old Norse (e.g. þú masar, hann masar; þú þekkir, hann þekkir; etc.).

See -s, -'s.

Questions about -es

What does -es mean?
-es means ch, when pronounced as /tʃ/: glitch→glitches (but psych→psychs).
What part of speech is -es?
-es is a suffix.
How do you pronounce -es?
-es is pronounced /-ɪz/.

Words near -es in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -es (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:

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