Buy

How to spell buy

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce buy

What does buy mean?

1. verbTo obtain something in exchange for money.
2. nounA purchase, especially one considered in terms of its value.

Buy in a sentence

• verb

  They plan to buy a new car before the end of the month.

• noun

  At that price the sofa was a genuine buy.

• verb

  With a coupon you can buy two boxes for the price of one.

• noun

  The analyst rated the company's shares a strong buy.

Where does buy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English bycgan, which simply meant 'to get by paying' or 'to acquire'. It has deep Germanic roots, related to the Gothic bugjan, also meaning to buy, although the wider family connections outside Germanic are unclear. Over the centuries the spelling drifted in a way that no longer matches the sound: the Old English 'g' softened and vanished, and the vowel was eventually written with a 'u' and a 'y', leaving a word pronounced exactly like 'by' and 'bye'. That mismatch between the spoken and written form is precisely why writers slip between buy, by, and bye. Because trade and money are so basic to daily life, buy has stayed in constant use for over a thousand years while shedding almost every trace of its original spelling logic.

How the word is built

• buy (whole root, from Old English bycgan: to purchase)

Words that sound like buy

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• by: Indicating the agent, means, route, location, or deadline associated with an action.
• bye: A casual way of saying goodbye when parting from someone.