Joey

How to spell joey

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce joey

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does joey mean?

1. nounA young kangaroo, wallaby, or other marsupial, especially one still carried in its mother's pouch.

Joey in a sentence

• The keeper watched the tiny joey poke its head out of the pouch.

• A newborn joey is no bigger than a jellybean when it first crawls into the pouch.

Where does joey come from?

Language of origin: Other

Joey is the everyday Australian word for a young kangaroo, wallaby, or other marsupial still carried in its mother's pouch, and it first appears in print in Australia during the 1830s. The exact source is genuinely uncertain, which is why dictionaries hedge: one well supported explanation is that it began as an affectionate diminutive of the personal name Joe (itself short for Joseph), a playful pet name applied to small young animals in the same way pets are nicknamed. Another suggestion traces it to a word in an Aboriginal language of the Sydney region, though the evidence for this is thin. Whatever its true root, the spelling settled early on the simple pattern of Joe plus a y, and the word spread from Australian usage into general English through nature writing and zoos. The trap for writers is purely the vowel cluster in the middle: it is spelled o, e, y, not the joe-y a careful speller might second guess.

How the word is built

• joe (pet form of the name Joseph)
• -y (diminutive/affectionate suffix)