How to spell agency

hear ita·gen·cy/'eɪdʒənsi/nounRules and real life

What it means: An organization that provides a specific service.

In a sentence: The secret agents work at the agency.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as agencey or agancy.

Same family: agent, agencies, agency-wide, representation, intermediary. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Agency” comes from Medieval Latin ‘agentia,’ meaning ‘doing’ or ‘acting,’ built from the same root as ‘agent.’ Over time, it shifted from the idea of the power to act to also mean an organization that acts on behalf of others, like a travel or government agency.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa)

Try spelling it

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Words like this

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