penitentiary

Other forms of penitentiary

plural

penitentiaries·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about penitentiary

What does penitentiary mean?

penitentiary means "used for punishment or reform of criminals or wrongdoers". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in penitentiary?

penitentiary has 5 syllables: pen-i-ten-tia-ry. The stress falls on "ten". In IPA it is /ˌpɛnɪˈtɛntʃɚi/.

What is another word for penitentiary?

Close synonyms include penitential, pen. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is penitentiary a common word?

penitentiary is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.