Word.ws English Dictionary

Otis

UK/ˈəʊtɪs/US/ˈoʊtɪs/

Otis proper noun: a surname transferred from the given name, notably of the American revolutionary hero James Otis and the innovator and industrialist Elisha Otis.

Proper noun

Otis

  1. A surname transferred from the given name, notably of the American revolutionary hero James Otis and the innovator and industrialist Elisha Otis.
  2. (US) A male given name from the Germanic languages, transferred from the surname.
    • […] in a world of mandatory diminutives, a corporation of jolly Bills and Jacks and Herbs and Teds in which an unabbreviable given name like Earl must have been a minor handicap, "Oat" was the best that could be done for a man with the given name of Otis.1961, Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road, Vintage Contemporaries, published 2000, →ISBN, page 74
  3. An Otis elevator.

Origin of Otis

A patronymic surname derived from Middle English genitive case of the Germanic given name Ote, Ode, cognate to modern Otto.

Words formed from Otis

Words that rhyme with Otis

Questions about Otis

What does Otis mean?
Otis means a surname transferred from the given name, notably of the American revolutionary hero James Otis and the innovator and industrialist Elisha Otis.
What part of speech is Otis?
Otis is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Otis?
Otis is pronounced /ˈoʊtɪs/ (US).

Words near Otis in the dictionary

  1. otiosely
  2. otioseness
  3. otiosities
  4. otiosity
  5. Otira
  6. Otis
  7. Otisville
  8. otitic
  9. otitid
  10. otitides
  11. otitids

Source and license

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