Dependency

How to spell dependency

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce dependency

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dependency mean?

1. nounA state of relying on someone or something for support, function, or survival.
2. nounA territory or region controlled by, but not formally part of, a governing state.

Dependency in a sentence

• The clinic treats alcohol dependency alongside other health problems.

• The island remained a dependency of the larger nation for over a century.

• The report warned about the country's dependency on imported energy.

• Officials from the mainland administered the distant dependency each summer.

Where does dependency come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb dependere, which literally meant 'to hang down' or 'to hang from', formed from de- meaning 'down or from' and pendere meaning 'to hang'. The idea of one thing hanging from another shifted naturally into the figurative sense of one thing relying on or being supported by another. English took the word through Old French dependre, and the abstract noun 'dependency' was built with the Latin-derived suffix -ency, which forms nouns describing a state or condition. The same pendere root gives us a whole family of relatives, including 'pendant', 'pending', and 'suspend', all of which involve hanging in some way. Knowing that hidden 'pend' (hang) sits at the centre helps fix the spelling, since the tricky part is really the unstressed -ency ending that adults sometimes write as -ancy.

How the word is built

• de- (down, from)
• pend (hang)
• -ency (state or condition)