Deputies

How to spell deputies

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce deputies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does deputies mean?

1. nounPeople appointed or elected to act on behalf of another or in their absence.

Deputies in a sentence

• The manager left two deputies in charge of the shop during her holiday.

• The sheriff sent several deputies to secure the abandoned building.

Where does deputies come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is the plural of 'deputy', which English took from the Old French 'depute', meaning a person delegated or appointed to act for someone else. The French form descended from the Late Latin verb 'deputare', which originally meant 'to cut off' or 'to prune' and later 'to assign, allot, or consider as belonging'. That verb was built from 'de-', meaning 'away' or 'off', and 'putare', meaning 'to reckon, think, or settle accounts', the same root that lurks inside words like 'compute' and 'dispute'. The sense narrowed over time from a general idea of allotting a task to the specific notion of appointing a substitute who carries another person's authority. English adopted it in the 1400s, and the spelling trap appears only in the plural, where the final 'y' shifts to 'ies'.

How the word is built

• deput- (from Latin deputare: to assign, allot)
• -y (noun) pluralised as -ies