Pharmacies

How to spell pharmacies

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce pharmacies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pharmacies mean?

1. nounShops or premises where prescription and over-the-counter medicines are prepared and sold.

Pharmacies in a sentence

• Most pharmacies in town stay open late on weekdays.

• The new health scheme lets patients collect repeat prescriptions from any of the local pharmacies.

Where does pharmacies come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek pharmakon, a versatile term that could mean a healing remedy, a drug, or even a poison depending on context. From it the Greeks formed pharmakeia, meaning the practice of administering drugs or preparing medicines. The word travelled into Latin as pharmacia and then into Old French as farmacie before reaching English in the late 1300s, originally describing the giving of medicine rather than a shop. The modern sense of a place where medicines are dispensed grew steadily over the following centuries. The plural pharmacies follows the regular English rule of changing a final y to ies, which is the spot writers must watch, alongside the silent h after the opening p that the Greek origin left behind.

How the word is built

• pharmac- (from Greek pharmakon: drug, remedy)
• -y (noun suffix)
• -ies (plural, y to ies)