Actor

How to spell actor

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce actor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does actor mean?

1. nounA person who performs a role in a play, film, or television production.

Actor in a sentence

• The lead actor rehearsed the same scene for three hours.

• Every actor in the cast attended the opening-night party.

Where does actor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from Latin actor, meaning 'a doer' or 'a performer', which was built on the verb agere, meaning 'to do, to drive, or to set in motion'. The past-participle stem of that verb was actus, and from it Latin formed many familiar relatives, including 'act', 'action', and 'agent'. In its earliest Roman use actor could mean a plaintiff in a lawsuit or simply a person who carried something out, and only later did the theatrical sense come to dominate. English adopted the word in the late 1300s, at first for any doer or agent, with the stage meaning settling in firmly by the 1500s. The spelling keeps the Latin agent ending -or rather than the more common English -er, which is the small detail that occasionally trips writers up.

How the word is built

• act (from Latin agere/actus: to do, perform)
• -or (agent suffix: one who does)