Bunnies

How to spell bunnies

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bunnies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bunnies mean?

1. nounAn affectionate, informal word for more than one rabbit.

Bunnies in a sentence

• The children fed lettuce to the bunnies at the petting farm.

• Two grey bunnies hopped across the lawn at dawn.

Where does bunnies come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word traces back to 'bunny', a fond pet name for a rabbit first recorded in the late 1600s. 'Bunny' is a diminutive of the dialect word 'bun', which was used in parts of Britain for a rabbit and sometimes a squirrel; the underlying sense seems to have been the animal's short, stumpy tail. The origin of that early 'bun' is genuinely uncertain, though one common suggestion links it to Scottish Gaelic 'bun', meaning the bottom, root, or stump of something. Over time 'bunny' settled firmly on the rabbit and became the affectionate, childlike term still in everyday use. The plural 'bunnies' follows the regular English rule for nouns ending in a consonant plus -y: drop the -y and add -ies, which is the small spelling trap to remember here.

How the word is built

• bunn- (from bunny, a pet name for a rabbit)
• -ies (plural of nouns ending in consonant plus -y)