Puppies

How to spell puppies

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce puppies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does puppies mean?

1. nounYoung dogs, especially those not yet fully grown.

Puppies in a sentence

• The rescue centre had six puppies waiting to be adopted.

• Newborn puppies sleep for most of the day during their first weeks.

Where does puppies come from?

Language of origin: French

Puppies is the plural of puppy, which came into English in the late 1400s from the Old French poupée, meaning a doll or a small plaything. That French word traces back to the Latin pupa, which literally meant a girl, a doll, or a puppet, the same root that gives us 'pupil' and 'puppet'. The original English sense was actually a small lapdog kept as a fashionable toy or companion, before the meaning settled into 'a young dog' during the 1500s. The spelling keeps the doubled p inherited from the French form, and the plural follows the regular English rule that turns a final consonant-plus-y into -ies, so puppy becomes puppies rather than 'puppys'. That tidy little y-to-ies switch is the only real trap in an otherwise straightforward word.

How the word is built

• pupp- (young dog, from Old French poupée 'doll, plaything')
• -ies (plural of nouns ending in -y)