Realty

How to spell realty

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce realty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does realty mean?

1. nounLand and the buildings on it, considered as property; real estate.

Realty in a sentence

• The firm specialises in commercial realty across three states.

• A downturn in the housing market hurt the value of their realty.

Where does realty come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Realty traces back to the Latin word res, which simply meant 'a thing, a matter, or an affair', and to the Late Latin adjective realis, meaning 'actual' or 'relating to things'. English took 'real' from this Latin source by way of legal French, where it came to describe property that consisted of land and buildings (things fixed in place) as opposed to movable goods. The abstract noun 'realty' was then formed by adding the suffix -ty, and from the 1400s it served in English law as a term for real property, that is, land and whatever is permanently attached to it. The very same res root underlies the modern words 'real', 'reality', and 'republic' (literally res publica, 'the public thing'). The spelling trap is precisely that closeness to 'reality': realty keeps only one vowel after the 'l', so there is no 'i' between the 'l' and the 't'.

How the word is built

• real (from Latin realis: actual, relating to things)
• -ty (noun suffix forming an abstract or collective noun)