CHAPTER 35

Using y, ry, ary, ery, iry,

ory, ury, yry

To the student of English, these seven possible endings must seem enormously confusing. But they do fit

into logical patterns. Almost all of these endings are simply variations of the ry suffix.

(^) The word emceed is the past tense of emcee, which is formed from an acronym (MC, Master of
Ceremonies) and is so new that some writers prefer not to use it.
Spelling rule #1: Most words in this group simply use the root word followed by ry. If the word ends
in r, do not double the r:
(^) Spelling rule #2: The silent e is often dropped:
(^) And the vowel before the ry is often dropped:
(^) Note that most of the words that end in ary are adjectives.
(^) But the nouns in the ary group are usually complete words:.
(^) Spelling rule #3: Most of the words that end in ery are nouns that often describe either an
occupation or an action:
(^) Note that there are adjectives in the ery group, but they are there because the root word ends in er:
(^) Words that end in ory are fairly evenly divided between nouns and adjectives. Most ory endings
follow an s or a t:
(^) There are many words that end in ry where the ry is not a suffix: