Concierge

How to spell concierge

9 letters · 3 syllables

1 of the 27 people asked to spell concierge in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce concierge

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does concierge mean?

1. nounA staff member, especially in a hotel, who assists guests by arranging services such as bookings, transport, and recommendations.

Concierge in a sentence

• The hotel concierge booked us a table at a restaurant across town.

• She asked the concierge to arrange a taxi to the airport for six in the morning.

Where does concierge come from?

Language of origin: French

This word came into English directly from French, where a concierge was the keeper or caretaker of a building, especially the doorkeeper of an apartment block in Paris. The French term descends from Old French, and its deeper origin is debated; the most widely accepted theory traces it to a Vulgar Latin form such as conservius, built on the Latin conservus, which literally meant 'fellow slave' or 'fellow servant', from con- 'together with' and servus 'slave, servant'. Over time the role shifted from a household servant to the trusted custodian who held the keys, received visitors, and managed a residence. English adopted the word in the 1600s and gradually narrowed it to the hotel attendant who arranges bookings and errands for guests. Because the spelling preserves the original French shape, the tricky -cier- sequence and the soft -ge ending are exactly where writers stumble, since the pronunciation gives few clues to the order of those letters.

How the word is built

• con- (with/together)
• cierge (from Latin conservus: fellow servant); the whole noun was borrowed wholesale from French