Goddesses

How to spell goddesses

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce goddesses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does goddesses mean?

1. nounMore than one female deity or divine being worshipped in a religion or mythology.

Goddesses in a sentence

• The museum exhibit featured statues of several ancient goddesses.

• Ancient myth describes many goddesses who controlled the harvest and the sea.

Where does goddesses come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word marries a native English root with a borrowed ending. The base 'god' comes from Old English 'god', a word of Germanic stock that originally referred to a deity in general and was applied to the Christian God after conversion. The feminine ending '-ess' is quite different in origin: it travelled into English through Old French '-esse', which descended from the Late Latin '-issa' and ultimately from the Greek feminine suffix '-issa'. English began bolting this French ending onto its own and borrowed words in the medieval period, producing forms like 'goddess' (recorded from around the late 1300s) alongside 'princess' and 'lioness'. The plural is then formed in the ordinary way, with '-es' added after the hissing '-ss', which is exactly why the word carries its characteristic run of repeated s and e letters. The spelling trap lives in that cluster, since the doubled s of '-ess' sits right beside the plural '-es', giving the tail '-esses'.

How the word is built

• god (deity)
• -ess (feminine suffix)
• -es (plural)