Industries

How to spell industries

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce industries

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does industries mean?

1. nounDistinct branches of economic activity, each producing particular goods or services.

Industries in a sentence

• The steel and shipping industries employ thousands across the region.

• New regulations affect several industries at once, from farming to finance.

Where does industries come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the plural of 'industry', which comes from the Latin industria, meaning 'diligence', 'hard work', or 'purposeful activity'. The root is thought to combine indu, an old form of 'in' meaning 'within', with a stem related to struere, 'to build or arrange', so the underlying image is of energy directed inward toward getting something done. English took the word in through Old French in the 1400s, where it first meant skilful or diligent effort rather than any factory. Only later, around the eighteenth century and the rise of large-scale manufacturing, did it shift to mean a branch of trade or production, giving us the modern plural for whole sectors of commerce. The spelling trap lies in the ending: the singular 'industry' drops its final -y and adds -ies to form the plural, just like 'company' becomes 'companies'.

How the word is built

• industr- (from Latin industria: diligence, activity)
• -y (noun suffix)
• -ies (plural ending, with -y changing to -ies)