Shady

How to spell shady

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shady

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shady mean?

1. adjectiveSheltered from direct sunlight, or giving such shelter.
2. adjectiveOf doubtful honesty or legality; suspicious or disreputable.

Shady in a sentence

• They parked in a shady corner of the car park to keep the seats cool.

• The contract collapsed once auditors uncovered some shady accounting.

• The garden has a shady patch beneath the oak where ferns grow well.

• He made his money through a string of shady business deals.

Where does shady come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly from the noun 'shade', which descends from the Old English sceadu, meaning a shadow or a sheltered, darkened place. That in turn traces back to a Germanic root shared with related words across northern Europe, all carrying the idea of darkness cast by something blocking the light. The adjective 'shady' is recorded from the late 1500s, first in the plain physical sense of being sheltered from the sun. By the early 1800s English speakers had stretched it into the figurative sense of something dim, questionable, or not quite honest, the same logic that lets us call a suspect deal 'dark' or 'murky'. The spelling is mostly predictable once you remember that the silent 'e' of 'shade' is dropped before the '-y' is added.

How the word is built

• shad(e) (from Old English sceadu: shade, shadow)
• -y (adjective suffix meaning 'full of' or 'characterised by')