Blender

How to spell blender

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce blender

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does blender mean?

1. nounAn electric kitchen machine with rotating blades used to puree, mix, or liquidise food and drinks.

Blender in a sentence

• She dropped the frozen berries into the blender to make a smoothie.

• The soup turned silky once he ran it through the blender.

Where does blender come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word is built on the verb 'blend', which means to mix things smoothly together, plus the suffix '-er' that turns a verb into the name of the tool that performs it. 'Blend' reaches back to the Old English 'blandan' and its close Old Norse relative 'blanda', both meaning 'to mix' or 'to mingle'; the Norse influence is widely thought to have kept the word alive and shaped its modern form during the Middle English period. For centuries 'blend' described mixing in general, from blending wines and teas to blending colours and fabrics. The noun 'blender' for a person or thing that blends is old, but the now-dominant meaning, an electric kitchen machine with whirling blades, only emerged in the early twentieth century once such appliances were invented. The spelling is wholly regular, simply the familiar verb with '-er' added, so the only thing to watch is not slipping an extra letter into the straightforward 'blend' stem.

How the word is built

• blend (to mix)
• -er (agent/instrument suffix denoting the thing that does the action)