Bakery

How to spell bakery

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce bakery

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bakery mean?

1. nounA place where bread, cakes, and pastries are made or sold.

Bakery in a sentence

• The smell of fresh bread drifted out of the corner bakery.

• She ordered a birthday cake from the local bakery on the high street.

Where does bakery come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from the everyday verb 'bake', which descends from the Old English bacan, meaning 'to cook with dry heat', a verb with relatives across the Germanic languages including the Dutch bakken and the German backen. To name the place where baking happens, English added the suffix -ery, a productive ending borrowed long ago through Old French and ultimately from Latin, used to mark a location or trade (as in 'brewery', 'nursery', and 'pottery'). The combination 'bakery' came into use only in the modern period, roughly the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, replacing the older term 'bakehouse'. The spelling trap is small but real: the silent 'e' of 'bake' is kept before the 'ry', so writers must resist the urge to drop it. Remembering that you simply add '-ry' to the whole word 'bake' keeps the spelling secure.

How the word is built

• bake (from Old English bacan: to cook by dry heat)
• -ery (place where an activity is carried on)