| key | abbey
alley bailey barley blimey cagey chimney chutney crikey curtsey donkey eyas galley gooey hockey hokey pokey honey horsey Incey Wincey jersey jockey joey kidney lamprey malarkey medley money monkey motley paisley parsley pulley Seymour Stanley storey trolley turkey valley volley whiskey |
5 responses to “ey as in turkey”
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attorney, journey, malarkey, odyssey, whiskey
Thanks! I’ve added malarkey and whiskey, I think I left them out because almost nobody uses the word “malarkey” here in Australia, and because it’s a list mainly for use with kids I wasn’t inclined to include alcohol words, but I guess they appear in books. The other three words all have unusual spellings (the or in attorney is pronounced “er” in Australia, same for the our in journey and the combination Greek y plus ss is highly unusual so I decided to leave it off this list, since someone learning “ey” as in chimney is probably not ready to learn that yet.
ya know i’m a kid
Is there are rule that decides when we should use ‘ey’ for the long e spelling as opposed to ‘y’?
It’s more helpful to think of guidelines/usual patterns than rules because every rule has exceptions, which kind of means it’s not really a rule. Most two-syllable words ending in ey are nouns, but /ee/ spelt ey is much less common than /ee/ spelt y, partly because y is also a suffix that turns words into adjectives, such as ease-easy, boss-bossy etc. Unfortunately, many nouns also end with y, think of body, copy, baby, duty, fury, pony and ruby. But if it’s not an noun it usually won’t end in ey. Is that useful?!?!