Territories

How to spell territories

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce territories

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does territories mean?

1. nounAreas of land under the control of a country, ruler, or organisation, or claimed and defended by an animal.

Territories in a sentence

• The empire governed vast overseas territories for centuries.

• Each sales manager is responsible for several regional territories.

Where does territories come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin territorium, which meant the land surrounding a town or belonging to a city, and which was built on terra, the ordinary Latin word for 'earth' or 'land'. The same terra root surfaces in many familiar English words, including 'terrain', 'terrestrial', and 'terrace', so picturing the earth itself can anchor the double 'r' in the spelling. English took the word up in the late 1300s, originally through legal and administrative use describing a district under a particular jurisdiction. Over time it broadened to mean any tract of land under the control of a state, ruler, or organisation, and later still it stretched to cover the patch of ground an animal defends or a salesperson's assigned area. The plural 'territories' adds the regular shift of -y to -ies, and the hardest part for writers is remembering the doubled 'r' early in the word, a feature inherited intact from terra.

How the word is built

• terr- (from terra: land, earth)
• -itor (place name suffix)
• -y (noun)
• -ies (plural)