Comedies

How to spell comedies

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce comedies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does comedies mean?

1. nounPlural of comedy: humorous plays, films, or other works intended to amuse.

Comedies in a sentence

• The streaming service added several classic comedies to its catalogue this month.

• He prefers light comedies over serious dramas after a long day at work.

Where does comedies come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word comes from the Greek komoidia, which described a light, amusing theatrical performance, and which was built from komos, meaning 'a revel' or 'festive procession', and aoidos, meaning 'singer', so the literal idea was 'the song of the revellers'. It passed into Latin as comoedia and then through Old French as comedie before settling into English in the late 1300s. For Dante and other medieval writers a 'comedy' simply meant a story with a happy ending, in contrast to a tragedy, rather than something funny; the modern sense of humorous entertainment came later. The plural 'comedies' follows the regular English rule for nouns ending in a consonant plus -y: the y becomes ie before the -es is added, which is exactly the spelling step writers must remember.

How the word is built

• comedy (from Greek komoidia: a humorous play)
• -es (plural; y changes to ie before -es)