Auctioneer

How to spell auctioneer

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce auctioneer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does auctioneer mean?

1. nounA person who conducts a sale by calling for and accepting competitive bids.

Auctioneer in a sentence

• The auctioneer accepted the final bid and brought down the gavel.

• A fast-talking auctioneer kept the room engaged throughout the estate sale.

Where does auctioneer come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word builds on 'auction', which comes from the Latin auctio, meaning 'an increasing' or 'a public sale by rising bids'. That noun grew from the verb augere, meaning 'to increase' or 'to make grow', the same root that gave English 'augment' and 'auction' itself, because at a sale the price keeps climbing as bidders compete. To name the person running such a sale, English added the suffix -eer, which marks someone who works with or deals in a particular thing, the same ending found in 'engineer', 'mountaineer', and 'profiteer'. The combined form appeared in English in the early 1700s, just as commercial salerooms were becoming common. The spelling trap sits in that ending: the doubled 'e' before the final 'r' (-eer) is easy to reduce to a single 'e' or to confuse with -ear or -ier.

How the word is built

• auction (from Latin auctio: an increasing, a public sale)
• -eer (agent suffix: one who works with)