Bouncer

How to spell bouncer

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bouncer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bouncer mean?

1. nounA person employed to control entry to a venue and remove troublemakers.
2. nounIn cricket, a fast short-pitched ball that rises sharply toward the batter.

Bouncer in a sentence

• The bouncer checked every ticket at the club entrance.

• The fast bowler unleashed a vicious bouncer that flew past the helmet.

• A burly bouncer stood at the rope, turning away anyone underdressed.

• The batter ducked under a bouncer aimed at his head.

Where does bouncer come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from the verb 'bounce' plus the agent suffix '-er', which marks a person or thing that performs an action. The verb 'bounce' appeared in Middle English around the 1200s, originally meaning 'to beat, thump, or strike loudly'; it was probably imitative in origin, echoing the sound of a heavy blow, and it may be related to the Dutch 'bons', meaning 'a thump'. Only later, by the 1500s and 1600s, did 'bounce' settle into its modern sense of springing back after hitting a surface. The noun 'bouncer' followed naturally: it first described something large or blustering, then in nineteenth-century American slang it came to mean a person employed to throw troublemakers out of a bar or club. The cricketing sense, a short-pitched ball that rears up sharply off the pitch, draws directly on the springing-back meaning. The single 'c' followed by 'er' is the usual spelling trap, since the soft 'c' sound tempts some writers toward an 's'.

How the word is built

• bounce (to spring back / eject forcefully)
• -er (agent suffix: one who or that which does)