Indie

How to spell indie

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce indie

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does indie mean?

1. adjectiveProduced by or associated with small, independent companies rather than major commercial ones, especially in music, film, or games.
2. nounAn independent company, band, film, or product operating outside the major commercial mainstream.

Indie in a sentence

• adjective

  The band built a loyal following on a small indie record label.

• noun

  The festival showcased several promising indie acts from the local scene.

• adjective

  She scored a surprise hit with a low-budget indie film.

• noun

  The bookshop stocks works from many small indie publishers.

Where does indie come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Indie is a clipping of the word independent, which itself reaches back to the Latin verb pendere, meaning 'to hang' or 'to weigh', combined with the prefix de- 'down from' and the negating prefix in- 'not'; the literal idea is of something that does not hang from or lean on anything else. Independent entered English in the early 1600s to describe people, nations and finances that stood on their own. The short, breezy form indie arose in the twentieth century, first in the film world (an 'indie' was an independent studio outside the big Hollywood machine) and then far more widely in music from the 1970s and 1980s, where it described small record labels and the bands signed to them. Over time indie came to name a whole aesthetic of guitar-driven, alternative, do-it-yourself culture rather than just a business arrangement. The spelling trap is the ending: it is spelled -ie like 'movie' shortened to a friendly nickname, not -y, even though it sounds the same.

How the word is built

• shortened form of independent (in- 'not'
• de- 'down/from'
• pend 'hang'
• -ent)