Subsidiaries

How to spell subsidiaries

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce subsidiaries

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does subsidiaries mean?

1. nounCompanies that are controlled and owned, wholly or partly, by a larger parent company.

Subsidiaries in a sentence

• The corporation reports the profits of all its overseas subsidiaries separately.

• The audit covered the parent firm and each of its three subsidiaries.

Where does subsidiaries come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin subsidium, which originally described reserve troops kept sitting back behind the front line, ready to give support if the main force needed help. That noun was built from sub-, meaning 'under' or 'behind', and the verb sedere, meaning 'to sit', so the literal idea was of soldiers held in reserve. From subsidium came the adjective subsidiarius, meaning 'serving to help or support', which English adopted in the 1500s as 'subsidiary'. Over time the supporting sense broadened from military aid to anything secondary or auxiliary, and by the modern era it settled into the business meaning of a company controlled and supported by a larger parent firm. The same sedere root still sits, quite literally, inside words like 'sediment' and 'reside', and the tricky middle of the spelling, the unstressed '-sidi-', is what trips writers who expect a doubled letter or a different vowel.

How the word is built

• sub- (under)
• sid (from sedere: to sit)
• -iary (relating to)
• -es (plural)