Ponies

How to spell ponies

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce ponies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ponies mean?

1. nounMore than one pony; small horses, often kept for riding by children.

Ponies in a sentence

• The children fed carrots to the two ponies in the paddock.

• The riding school keeps several gentle ponies for young beginners.

Where does ponies come from?

Language of origin: French

The word descends from the singular 'pony', which appears in English in the 1600s and seems to have come north from Scots 'powney'. That Scots form is generally traced to the Old French 'poulenet', a diminutive meaning 'little foal', which itself goes back to Late Latin 'pullanus' and ultimately to Latin 'pullus', meaning the young of any animal. The same 'pullus' root lies behind 'poultry' and 'pullet', so a pony is, etymologically, simply a small young creature. The plural 'ponies' follows the regular English rule that a noun ending in a consonant plus 'y' changes the y to i and adds -es, which is the small spelling trap here: it is not 'ponys'. The animal sense narrowed over time to mean specifically a small breed of horse rather than a foal.

How the word is built

• pony (small horse)
• -es (plural; the y becomes i before -es)