Inventories

How to spell inventories

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce inventories

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inventories mean?

1. nounDetailed lists or stocks of goods, items, or materials held by a business or organisation.
2. verbMakes a detailed list of the items or stock in a place.

Inventories in a sentence

• noun

  The warehouse manager reconciled the two inventories before the audit.

• verb

  Every quarter the assistant inventories the supply cupboard down to the last box.

• noun

  Retailers usually run down their inventories before the end of the financial year.

• verb

  The new system automatically inventories each shipment as it arrives at the dock.

Where does inventories come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin inventarium, which meant a list of things that have been found or located, especially a catalogue of goods belonging to an estate. That noun was built on the verb invenire, meaning 'to come upon' or 'to find', which itself combines in- ('upon') with venire ('to come'). The same venire root gives English a whole family of relatives, including 'event', 'convene', and 'invent', which originally meant simply 'to find out' or 'discover'. English took the singular 'inventory' through Old French and medieval Latin in the late 1300s, and the modern plural keeps the regular pattern of words ending in a consonant plus -y, where the y turns to -ies. That final shift from -ory to -ories is the spelling point worth remembering, since the unstressed middle vowels give writers no audible clue.

How the word is built

• in- (upon)
• vent (from venire: to come, find)
• -ory (noun: a place/list)
• -ies (plural of -y)