-ery
suffix ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Added to occupational etc. nouns to form other nouns meaning the "art, craft, or practice of." morpheme
"midwife + -ery → midwifery"
- 2 Forming adjectives. morpheme, rare
"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."
- 3 Added to verbs to form nouns meaning "place of" (an art, craft, or practice). morpheme
"bake + -ery → bakery"
- 4 Added to nouns to form other nouns meaning "a class, group, or collection of." morpheme
"crock + -ery → crockery"
- 5 Added to nouns to form other nouns meaning "behavior characteristic of." morpheme
"snob + -ery → snobbery"
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"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."
Etymology
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.
More for "-ery"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.