Cities

How to spell cities

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cities

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cities mean?

1. nounLarge or important towns, each typically a major centre of population, commerce, and administration.

Cities in a sentence

• The rail network links several major cities across the country.

• Many coastal cities have invested heavily in flood defences.

Where does cities come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the plural of 'city', which English took from the Old French 'cite', itself descended from the Latin 'civitas'. In Latin 'civitas' did not originally mean a town at all; it meant the body of citizens or the state of being a citizen, built on 'civis', meaning 'citizen'. Over time the word slid from describing the community of people to describing the place where that community lived, so by the time it reached medieval English in the 1200s it pointed to a large or important town. The same 'civis' root still lives inside 'civic', 'civil', and 'citizen', which is a useful reminder that a city was first a gathering of people, not just walls and streets. The plural follows the standard English rule of changing a final 'y' after a consonant to 'i' and adding '-es', which is precisely the spelling step writers occasionally fumble.

How the word is built

• cit- (from Latin civitas: citizenry, community)
• -y (noun)
• -es (plural, with y to i change)