-ery

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English -erie,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French -erie,^[5][2][4][6] which has two sources.^[5][7] One is Latin -āria, which is -ia added to nouns in -ārius, the source of -ary.^[5][3] The other is -ie added to agent nouns in -ere and -eor, from -ātor.^[5][7][8] It is thus a compound of the sources of -er and -y.^[2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

In French the derivatives of personal nouns in -ier and -er named the goods someone dealt in (draperie), a skill (archerie) or a place of work (boulangerie).^[5][4] It then began to go directly on other nouns and adjectives.^[5][4] Middle English first took it in such French borrowings, often with the agent noun, as in archer and archery.^[9][4]

Semantic evolution

English words such as battery, bravery, nunnery and treachery were adopted from French, and others were formed in English on nouns in -er, adjectives and verbs: drudgery, gunnery, slavery.^[5][4] It became so linked to -er that any agent noun could have a derivative in -ery, and this spread to names of premises or fittings, as in bakery, crockery, scenery.^[4] In modern, chiefly American use, words modelled on bakery gained currency for a shop or a place to buy something, as in bootery and eatery.^[5][7] In many words it is contracted to -ry, as in citizenry and yeomanry.^[5][9] Barnhart cautions that some words, such as tannery, cannot be told apart from -er with -y.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 1440 – archery.^[5]
• 1545 – bakery.^[5]
• 1548 – bravery.^[5]
• 1687 – machinery.^[5]
• 1780 – piggery.^[5]
• 1901 – eatery.^[5]

Meanings

Suffix

1. Forming nouns for a place where something is done, kept, grown or sold: brewery, fishery, rookery.^[6][2][9]
2. Forming nouns for a class or collection of things: cutlery, greenery.^[6][2][9]
3. Forming nouns for qualities or behaviour taken together: snobbery, trickery.^[6][2][9]
4. Forming nouns for an art, practice or trade: cookery, husbandry.^[6][2][9]
5. Forming nouns for a state or condition: slavery.^[6][2][9]

Word family

• bakery
• brewery
• pottery
• robbery
• scenery

Related words

• -er
• -ry
• -ary
• -y

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
7. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology