Adventurer

How to spell adventurer

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce adventurer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does adventurer mean?

1. nounA person who seeks out exciting or risky experiences, often through travel or bold undertakings.

Adventurer in a sentence

• The documentary followed a lone adventurer across the Arctic ice.

• As a young adventurer, she funded her travels by working in remote hostels.

Where does adventurer come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb advenire, which literally meant 'to arrive' or 'to come toward', built from ad 'to' and venire 'to come'. From this came the Latin noun adventura, 'a thing about to happen', and that sense of a chancy future event passed into Old French as aventure, meaning a risk, a piece of luck, or a daring exploit. English borrowed the noun 'adventure' in the 1200s, and by the 1400s an 'adventurer' was someone who took commercial or military risks, especially a merchant who staked money on a risky voyage. Only later did the word settle into its modern image of a bold traveller or seeker of exciting experiences. The same venire root survives in everyday relatives such as 'event', 'invent', and 'venture', and the silent original 'd' from ad- is exactly the letter that keeps the spelling regular rather than the 'aventurer' the French form might suggest.

How the word is built

• ad- (to, toward)
• vent (from venire: to come)
• -ure (noun-forming suffix)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)