Enemies

How to spell enemies

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce enemies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does enemies mean?

1. nounPeople who are actively hostile to, or opposed to, someone or something.

Enemies in a sentence

• The general studied the position of his enemies before the battle.

• Years of fierce competition had made the two firms bitter enemies.

Where does enemies come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the plural of 'enemy', which traces back to the Latin inimicus, literally meaning 'not a friend', formed from the negative prefix in- ('not') joined to amicus ('friend'). The same amicus root gives us 'amicable' and 'amity', so an enemy is, at root, the exact opposite of a friendly companion. Latin inimicus passed into Old French as enemi, and English borrowed it during the 1200s, gradually settling on the spelling 'enemy'. When the singular ends in a consonant plus -y, English forms the plural by changing the y to i and adding -es, which is precisely why we write 'enemies' rather than 'enemys'. That y-to-ies rule is the only real spelling trap here, since the rest of the word stays faithful to its French and Latin ancestry.

How the word is built

• enem- (from Latin inimicus: not a friend)
• -ies (plural of -y)