Grassy

How to spell grassy

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce grassy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does grassy mean?

1. adjectiveCovered with or full of grass.

Grassy in a sentence

• The children rolled down the grassy slope at the park.

• We spread the blanket on a grassy bank beside the river.

Where does grassy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on grass, a thoroughly native English noun that descends from the Old English græs, meaning the green plants that cover meadows and lawns. The Old English form goes back to a shared Germanic root that also gave Dutch gras and German Gras, and it is distantly connected to the words 'green' and 'grow', all of them rooted in an ancient idea of sprouting and turning verdant. The adjective grassy was formed inside English itself by adding the productive suffix -y, which turns a noun into an adjective meaning 'full of' or 'covered with' that thing, exactly as in 'sandy' or 'leafy'. The spelling keeps the double s of grass intact before the suffix, which is the one small point worth remembering. The word has been in everyday use for centuries to describe ground thick with grass.

How the word is built

• grass (from Old English græs)
• -y (adjective suffix meaning 'covered with' or 'characterised by')