Commodities

How to spell commodities

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce commodities

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does commodities mean?

1. nounRaw materials or primary agricultural products that can be bought and sold, or useful items in general.

Commodities in a sentence

• The fund spreads its risk across metals, grain, and other commodities.

• Rising fuel and food prices pushed the cost of basic commodities higher.

Where does commodities come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin commoditas, meaning 'fitness', 'convenience', or 'advantage', which was built on the adjective commodus, 'suitable' or 'convenient'. That adjective combined the prefix com-, meaning 'with' or 'together', and modus, meaning 'measure' or 'due proportion', so something commodus was literally 'measured to fit' and therefore handy or beneficial. English took the word in through Old French commodite during the 1400s, when a commodity first meant a benefit, advantage, or useful thing. From the sense of 'useful thing' it gradually narrowed to articles of trade and then to the raw materials and staple goods bought and sold in bulk on modern markets. The modus root also lives on in 'mode', 'modest', and 'accommodate', and remembering that hidden 'mod' (measure) sitting between the doubled 'm' and the '-ity' ending is a good way to keep the spelling straight.

How the word is built

• com- (with, together)
• mod (measure, fitting)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix)
• -es (plural)