Businesses

How to spell businesses

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce businesses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does businesses mean?

1. nounPlural of business: commercial or trading organisations, or matters of commerce considered collectively.

Businesses in a sentence

• Several small businesses on the high street closed during the recession.

• The new tax rules affect how local businesses report their income.

Where does businesses come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word traces back to the Old English bisignes, which originally meant 'anxiety', 'care', or the state of being occupied, and was formed from bisig, the ancestor of modern 'busy', meaning 'careful' or 'occupied'. The noun was simply the adjective 'busy' with the suffix -ness attached, exactly the pattern that gives us 'kindness' and 'happiness'. Over the centuries the sense drifted away from worry and toward 'occupation' and then to 'a commercial enterprise', which became dominant from around the 1700s. The spelling trap is hidden in the pronunciation: we say it as roughly two syllables ('biz-ness'), so the silent 'i' in the middle of busi-ness is easy to drop, and the plural then adds a further -es. Because 'busy' lurks inside it, remembering that businesses is literally busy plus -ness plus -es helps fix the deceptive vowels.

How the word is built

• busy (busi-, occupied)
• -ness (state/quality, noun suffix)
• -es (plural)