Creamy

How to spell creamy

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce creamy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does creamy mean?

1. adjectiveHaving the smooth, rich, thick texture or pale colour of cream.

Creamy in a sentence

• The soup had a creamy texture after she stirred in the butter.

• He painted the hallway a soft creamy white.

Where does creamy come from?

Language of origin: French

Creamy is simply the noun 'cream' with the adjective ending -y added on. Cream itself reached English in the 1300s from Old French 'cresme' or 'craime', which in turn drew on two Latin sources that became tangled together: 'chrisma', meaning a consecrated oil used for anointing, and the Late Latin 'cramum', a word for the rich layer that rises to the top of milk. The dairy sense won out, and by the medieval period cream meant the thick, fatty part of milk. The suffix -y, an old native English ending that turns a noun into a 'full of' or 'resembling' adjective, gives us creamy, recorded from around the late 1500s, describing anything smooth, rich, and pale like cream. Because the word is built straight from cream plus -y, the spelling keeps the silent-looking 'ea' of cream and never doubles the final letter.

How the word is built

• cream (from Latin chrisma via Old French)
• -y (adjective suffix meaning 'having the quality of')