Balcony

How to spell balcony

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce balcony

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does balcony mean?

1. nounA platform that projects from the wall of a building, enclosed by a railing and reached from an upper floor.
2. nounThe upper tier of seats in a theatre or cinema, raised above the main floor.

Balcony in a sentence

• The hotel room had a small balcony overlooking the harbour.

• Their tickets were for the front row of the balcony, high above the stage.

• She watered the herbs growing in pots on the balcony.

• The cheaper seats in the balcony still gave a clear view of the orchestra.

Where does balcony come from?

Language of origin: Italian

Balcony comes from the Italian balcone, which described a large window or a raised platform projecting from a building. That word grew out of balco, meaning 'scaffold' or 'beam', and balco itself was borrowed from a Germanic source, the Lombardic balko, simply meaning a wooden beam. English took the word up in the early 1600s, when Italian architecture and design were fashionable, and for a time the stress fell on the middle syllable (bal-CO-ny) before settling on the modern first-syllable pronunciation. Because the root is about a single beam or platform, the spelling keeps just one l and one c, which is the part writers sometimes second-guess. The same Germanic beam-word lies behind the architectural sense English never doubled, so resisting the urge to write 'ballcony' or 'balconey' is the main trap.

How the word is built

• balcon- (from Italian balcone: large window, scaffold)
• -y (anglicised noun ending)