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”

  1. Misty says:

    attorney, journey, malarkey, odyssey, whiskey

    • alison says:

      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.

  2. vihaan.srivatsa says:

    ya know i’m a kid

  3. Mary-Anne says:

    Is there are rule that decides when we should use ‘ey’ for the long e spelling as opposed to ‘y’?

    • alison says:

      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?!?!

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