Ceremonies

How to spell ceremonies

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce ceremonies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ceremonies mean?

1. nounFormal events or rituals performed on important occasions, such as weddings, graduations, or official observances.

Ceremonies in a sentence

• The university holds two graduation ceremonies each summer.

• Local ceremonies to honour the war dead take place every November.

Where does ceremonies come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the plural of 'ceremony', which English took from the Latin word caerimonia, meaning a sacred rite or act of religious reverence. The exact origin of the Latin term is debated, though it may be connected to the town of Caere in Etruria, an old Etruscan religious centre, which would explain the puzzling 'ae' (later 'e') in the spelling. The word travelled into English in the late 1300s by way of Old French ceremonie, at first describing solemn religious observances before broadening to cover any formal social occasion. The shift from the singular 'ceremony' to the plural drops the 'y' and adds '-ies', a regular English rule that nonetheless trips writers who momentarily write 'ceremonys'. The unstressed middle vowels, the 'mon' that sounds like 'mun', are the part most likely to be misheard and misspelled.

How the word is built

• ceremon- (from Latin caerimonia: a sacred rite)
• -ies (plural of nouns ending in -y)