Celebratory

How to spell celebratory

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce celebratory

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does celebratory mean?

1. adjectiveMarking or expressing joy at an achievement, occasion, or happy event.

Celebratory in a sentence

• The team raised a celebratory toast after closing the deal.

• She planned a celebratory dinner to mark her parents' anniversary.

Where does celebratory come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb celebrare, which meant 'to throng, to frequent, to honour with a crowd', built on the adjective celeber meaning 'frequented, populous, much-attended'. The original sense centred on the idea of many people gathering, since a place or event that drew a crowd was deemed worth marking, and from that grew the meaning 'to honour publicly' or 'to mark with festivities'. English took 'celebrate' from this Latin root in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the adjective 'celebratory' was formed later by adding the familiar -ory ending seen in words like 'congratulatory' and 'introductory'. The same celeber family also gives us 'celebrity', a person much talked about and thronged by others. A useful spelling reminder is that the middle vowel is a soft, easily missed schwa: it is 'cele-BRA-tory', with that 'a' written even though it is barely pronounced.

How the word is built

• celebrat- (from Latin celebrare: to honour or attend in great numbers)
• -ory (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to or characterised by')