Registry

How to spell registry

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce registry

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does registry mean?

1. nounAn official place where formal records or lists are kept, or the collection of records itself.
2. nounA central database in an operating system that stores configuration settings and options.

Registry in a sentence

• The couple added a stand mixer to their wedding registry.

• Editing the Windows registry can stop the program from launching at startup.

• They were married at the local registry rather than in a church.

• A corrupt registry entry caused the laptop to crash repeatedly.

Where does registry come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Late Latin registrum, an altered form of regesta, meaning 'things recorded' or 'a list of entries'. That noun came from the Latin verb regerere, literally 'to carry back' or 'to bring together', formed from re- 'back' and gerere 'to carry', because a register gathered scattered facts back into one bound book. Medieval clerks used registrum for the official ledger in which entries were copied, and English took the word in through Old French around the 1500s, with 'registry' developing as the noun for both the office that keeps such records and the collection of records itself. The same root sits behind the everyday words 'register' and 'registration', which helps explain the cluster of letters in the middle. The spelling trap is purely that unstressed middle: the '-istry' ending is easy to slur, and writers sometimes drop the first 'r' or muddle the 'try' cluster.

How the word is built

• regist- (from Latin registrum: a list or record)
• -ry (noun suffix denoting a place or collection)