Advertiser

How to spell advertiser

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce advertiser

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does advertiser mean?

1. nounA person, business, or organisation that pays to promote a product, service, or message to the public.

Advertiser in a sentence

• The magazine relies on each advertiser to cover its printing costs.

• As a small advertiser, she could only afford a single slot on local radio.

Where does advertiser come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin advertere, which literally meant 'to turn toward', built from ad- meaning 'to' and vertere meaning 'to turn'. That sense of turning one's attention toward something passed into Old French as advertir or avertir, 'to notice' or 'to warn', and English took it up in the 1400s as 'advertise', originally meaning 'to make someone take notice' or 'to give notice of'. Over the 1700s the commercial sense settled in: to publicise goods so that buyers would turn their attention to them. The agent noun 'advertiser' simply names the person or company doing that publicising. The same vertere root that means 'turn' still spins through relatives like 'convert', 'reverse' and 'divert', and remembering that buried 'vert' helps explain why the word is spelled with a 'v' and a 't' rather than the way it sometimes sounds.

How the word is built

• ad- (to, toward)
• vert (turn, from Latin vertere)
• -ise (verb suffix)
• -er (agent noun: one who does)