Embassies

How to spell embassies

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce embassies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does embassies mean?

1. nounThe official residences or offices of ambassadors, where a country conducts diplomacy abroad.

Embassies in a sentence

• Several embassies were closed during the security alert.

• The foreign ministry coordinates all of its overseas embassies from the capital.

Where does embassies come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the plural of 'embassy', a word that travelled into English through Old French in the late 1500s. The Old French forms ambassee and embassee meant a mission or the service of an envoy, and they trace back to Medieval Latin ambactia, meaning 'service' or 'an errand carried out on someone's behalf'. That Latin word itself rests on ambactus, 'a servant or vassal', which is widely thought to be of Gaulish (Celtic) origin, borrowed by Latin from the Celtic peoples Rome encountered. Over time the sense shifted from the personal service of a messenger to the formal diplomatic mission itself, and then to the official residence and staff of an ambassador in a foreign country. The double 's' that catches writers out simply preserves the spelling of 'embassy', where 'embass-' carries that old idea of service before the plural ending turns the 'y' into 'ies'.

How the word is built

• embass- (from ambactia: service, mission)
• -ies (plural of nouns ending in -y)