Bachelor
nounA man who has never married.
How to spell bachelor
8 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce bachelor
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does bachelor mean?
- nounA man who has never married.
- nounA person who holds the first or lowest university degree, or the degree itself.
Bachelor in a sentence
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He stayed a confirmed bachelor well into his sixties.
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She earned a bachelor of arts in history before starting work.
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His friends threw him a bachelor party the night before the wedding.
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The job listing required a bachelor degree in engineering.
Where does bachelor come from?
Language of origin: French
Bachelor came into English in the 1200s from Old French bacheler, which meant a young man, especially a youth training to become a knight or someone not yet established in his own household. The deeper root is debated, but it is usually traced to a Medieval Latin word baccalarius, apparently meaning a farm worker or the tenant of a small grazing holding called a baccalaria. From the sense of a young, junior, or not-yet-settled man, English developed two enduring uses: an unmarried man, and a person holding the lowest university degree, the holder being thought of as a junior or beginning scholar. The spelling trap is real: the word has no letter 't', so the tempting misspelling 'batchelor' (as if from 'batch') is wrong, and there is a single 'l' followed by the soft '-or' ending rather than '-er'.
How the word is built
- bachel- (from Old French bacheler: a young man, aspirant knight)
- -or (agent/noun ending)
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