Masses

How to spell masses

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce masses

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does masses mean?

1. nounVery large quantities or amounts of something.
2. nounThe great body of ordinary people, especially as distinct from the elite.

Masses in a sentence

• The warehouse held masses of unsold stock.

• The politician claimed to speak for the masses rather than the wealthy few.

• Tourists arrived in masses for the summer festival.

• Cheap paperbacks brought serious literature to the masses.

Where does masses come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the plural of 'mass', which English took from the Old French 'masse', meaning a lump or heap, in the 1300s. The French form rested on the Latin 'massa', a kneaded lump of dough or any shapeless body, which was itself borrowed from the Greek 'maza', meaning a barley cake or kneaded dough, ultimately tied to a verb meaning 'to knead'. From the idea of a shaped lump the sense broadened to any large quantity or bulky body, and by the 1700s 'the masses' had come to mean the great body of ordinary people viewed as a single crowd. The religious sense of Mass is a separate word from the Latin 'missa', so the plural 'masses' covers both ideas depending on context. The spelling is straightforward once you remember the double 's' of the singular simply gains a plural '-es'.

How the word is built

• mass (lump, bulk, large body)
• -es (plural noun suffix)