Enemies

How to spell enemies

7 letters · 3 syllables

16 of the 58 people asked to spell enemies in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

The most common mistake is enemys. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

enemys enemies

What people typed instead

• enemys4 people

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)

People who misspell enemies also struggle with

Of the Spelling Garden players who got enemies wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.

• deemed 100% of them got it wrong
• mysteries 40% of them got it wrong