Marquee

How to spell marquee

7 letters · 2 syllables

14 of the 25 people asked to spell marquee in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

How to pronounce marquee

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does marquee mean?

1. nounA large tent erected for an outdoor event such as a wedding, fair, or garden party.
2. nounA roofed projection over the entrance of a cinema or theatre, often bearing illuminated signs announcing the programme.
3. adjectiveLeading or most prominent, as in a top-billed name or feature.

Marquee in a sentence

• noun

  The caterers set up a white marquee on the lawn for the reception.

• noun

  The film's title glowed in bright letters across the cinema marquee.

• adjective

  The club paid a fortune to sign its new marquee player.

• noun

  Heavy rain meant the entire wedding moved inside the marquee.

• noun

  Crowds gathered under the theatre marquee waiting for the doors to open.

• adjective

  The conference promised a marquee speaker to draw a bigger audience.

Where does marquee come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the French marquise, the feminine form of marquis, which named a noblewoman of high rank but also came to describe a large, grand tent or canopy of the sort a marquise might sit under. English borrowed marquise in the 1600s and 1700s, and English speakers misread the final '-se' as a plural ending, assuming the word was 'marquees'. From that mistaken plural they invented a brand-new singular, 'marquee', which is why the modern spelling drifted away from the French original. This kind of back-formation, where a wrongly-assumed plural breeds a false singular, is the same process that gave English the word 'pea' from the older 'pease'. The original sense of a large tent survives in British use, while American English later applied it to the projecting canopy over a theatre or cinema entrance, complete with the illuminated lettering that announced the show, and from there to the figurative sense of anything top-billed or headline-worthy.

How the word is built

• marqu- (from French marquise, a marchioness or her grand canopy)
• -ee (re-spelt English ending)

People who misspell marquee also struggle with

Of the Spelling Garden players who got marquee wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.

• idiosyncrasy 100% of them got it wrong
• connoisseur 80% of them got it wrong