confederacy
/kənˈfɛdəɹəsi/noun
confederacy is a noun meaning “An alliance” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-O-N-F-E-D-E-R-A-C-Y and has 5 syllables, and it appears 1.7 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of confederacy is confederacies.
What does confederacy mean?
noun
- 1
An alliance.
- 2
A state where the sovereign constituent units delegate their authority to the centre.
- 3
Specifically, an instance of a decentralized governing structure among the indigenous peoples of North America.
The Blackfoot, Iroquois, and Sioux peoples all were governed as confederacies. There were also multi-ethnic confederacies, such as the Iron Confederacy made up of the Plains Cree, Assiniboine, Stoney, and Saulteaux.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce confederacy?
- /kənˈfɛdəɹəsi/
Confederacy has 5 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-confederacy.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of confederacy
- confederacies plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is confederacy?
Confederacy appears 1.7 times per million words in written English, the 21,516th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Confederacy in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense an alliance:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | confédération |
| German | Konföderation |
| Portuguese | confederação |
| Spanish | confederación |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does confederacy come from?
From Middle English confederacie, from Anglo-Norman confederacie, from Latin cōnfoederātiō. Doublet of confederation.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).