Strategies

How to spell strategies

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce strategies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does strategies mean?

1. nounCarefully devised plans or methods for achieving particular goals.

Strategies in a sentence

• The marketing team compared several strategies before launching the product.

• Effective revision strategies helped her pass the exam.

Where does strategies come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word descends from the Greek stratēgia, which meant 'generalship' or the art of commanding an army, built from stratos 'army' and agein 'to lead'. A stratēgos was literally the leader of the host, the elected general of an ancient Greek city, so the original sense was thoroughly military. The word travelled into English in the late 1700s, partly through French stratégie, as writers began discussing the planning of campaigns and wars. From that battlefield meaning it broadened during the 1800s and 1900s to cover any carefully devised plan for reaching a goal, whether in business, sport, or study. The plural keeps the regular English rule of changing a final consonant-plus-y into -ies, which is the spelling step most people get right but occasionally fumble, and the buried Greek 'strat' root explains the single t and the unexpected vowel.

How the word is built

• strateg- (from Greek stratēgia: generalship)
• -y (noun, replaced by -ies in plural)