Rocky

How to spell rocky

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rocky

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rocky mean?

1. adjectiveCovered with, made of, or full of rocks.
2. adjectiveUnsteady, shaky, or marked by difficulty and instability.

Rocky in a sentence

• The trail grew steep and rocky near the summit.

• The new company had a rocky start before profits finally rose.

• They pitched the tent on a flat patch of the otherwise rocky ground.

• Their relationship went through a rocky period last winter.

Where does rocky come from?

Language of origin: French

This word is built from 'rock', a noun for stone that English took from the Old French 'roque' or 'rocque', itself from the Medieval Latin 'rocca', a word of uncertain ultimate origin that meant a mass of stone or crag. To 'rock' meaning stone arrived in English during the medieval period, and writers later added the familiar native suffix '-y' (from Old English '-ig', meaning 'full of' or 'characterised by') to form an adjective. The figurative sense of 'unsteady' or 'difficult' grew naturally from the literal idea of ground strewn with stones, where footing is treacherous and progress is hard. There is a separate verb 'to rock' (to sway), from Old English 'roccian', but the adjective 'rocky' meaning shaky borrows its sense of instability more from imagery than from that verb. The single 'c' before the 'y' and the simple doubling-free spelling make it gentle, though it is occasionally confused with 'rockie'.

How the word is built

• rock (stone)
• -y (adjective suffix: full of, like)