Galley

How to spell galley

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce galley

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does galley mean?

1. nounThe kitchen area aboard a ship, boat, or aircraft.
2. nounA long, low ship of ancient or medieval times propelled mainly by oars.
3. nounIn traditional printing, a long tray holding set type, or the proof pulled from it for correction.

Galley in a sentence

• The cook prepared breakfast in the cramped galley below deck.

• The museum displayed a model of a Roman galley with rows of oars.

• The editor marked corrections on the galley before the book went to press.

• Flight attendants stowed the trolleys in the rear galley before landing.

• Prisoners were once forced to row a galley across the Mediterranean.

• The compositor lifted the set type from the metal galley on the bench.

Where does galley come from?

Language of origin: French

The word came into English in the 1200s from Old French galie or galee, which named a long, low ship driven by banks of oars. That French form descended from Medieval Latin galea, and the chain reaches back to Medieval Greek galaia, a word for such a vessel whose ultimate meaning is uncertain. From the ship itself two everyday senses branched off: because the cooking hearth on such a vessel sat in a cramped fixed space, 'galley' came to mean the kitchen aboard any ship or, much later, an aircraft. In printing, a 'galley' was originally a long oblong tray that held set type, again echoing the long narrow shape of the boat, and the trial print pulled from it became the famous 'galley proof'. The doubled spelling with -ll- and the -ey ending are the trap, since the word sounds exactly like it would if spelled 'galy', so the silent extra letters must simply be remembered.

How the word is built

• galley (from Old French galie, a long oared ship); the kitchen sense and the printing sense are later extensions of the same word