Word.ws English Dictionary

cubby

US/kʌbi/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Ireland/ˈkʊbi/

cubby noun: a small, confined space.

cubby: a small, confined space
Image: Douglas P Perkins, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

cubby (plural cubbies)

  1. A small, confined space.
  2. A cell in a shelf for storing items, particularly in a school.
    • It’s standard for Norwegian kindergartens to have rows of cubbies just inside the door, each storing layers of spare clothes, including rain and snow gear and boots and mittens.2024, Jackie Mader, In Norway, having a joyful, secure childhood is a right enshrined into law, in: The Christian Science Monitor, October 15 2024
    Synonyms:
    pigeonhole

Synonyms of cubby

Forms of cubby

pluralcubbies

Plural of cubby: cubbies

Origin of cubby

From Middle English cub (“stall”) + -y (diminutive suffix). Cognate with French cagibi.

Words formed from cubby

Phrases with cubby

Words that rhyme with cubby

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cubby

What does cubby mean?
Cubby means a small, confined space.
What part of speech is cubby?
Cubby is a noun.
How do you pronounce cubby?
Cubby is pronounced /kʌbi/ (US).
What is the plural of cubby?
The plural of cubby is cubbies.

Words near cubby in the dictionary

  1. cubbishness
  2. Cubbison
  3. Cubbisons
  4. cubbridge-head
  5. cubbridge-heads
  6. cubby
  7. cubby hole
  8. cubby holes
  9. cubby house
  10. cubby houses
  11. cubbyhole

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cubby (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cubby.wav.

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