Embassy
nounThe official residence and offices of an ambassador and diplomatic staff in a foreign country.
How to spell embassy
7 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce embassy
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does embassy mean?
- nounThe official residence and offices of an ambassador and diplomatic staff in a foreign country.
Embassy in a sentence
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She queued outside the embassy to renew her passport.
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The embassy issued a travel warning to its citizens abroad.
Where does embassy come from?
Language of origin: French
Embassy traces back to a word that originally meant something like 'a servant on a mission'. The deepest root is thought to be the Gaulish (Celtic) word ambactus, meaning a vassal or dependent, which Latin absorbed and which underlies the Latin verb ambactiare, 'to go on a mission'. From this, Italian developed ambasciata, 'the business or message entrusted to an envoy', and French reshaped it into ambassee. English borrowed the term in the sixteenth century, at first meaning the errand or formal mission carried out by an ambassador, and only later settling on the modern sense of the official residence and staff of a diplomatic representative. The same family gives us 'ambassador', which is why the silent shift from 'amb-' to 'emb-' can trip writers up; the doubled s of embassy survives straight from the French and Italian forms, and is the spelling trap most adults stumble over.
How the word is built
- embass- (from Old French ambassee: an envoy's mission or legation)
- -y (noun suffix)
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