Bowler

How to spell bowler

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bowler

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bowler mean?

1. nounA player who bowls the ball, especially in cricket or in ten-pin bowling.
2. nounA hard felt hat with a rounded crown and narrow brim.

Bowler in a sentence

• The fast bowler took five wickets before lunch.

• He wore a black bowler and carried a tightly rolled umbrella.

• As the team's best bowler, she opened every match.

• The old photograph showed city clerks in matching bowler hats.

Where does bowler come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built straightforwardly from the English verb 'bowl', which goes back through Old French 'boule' to the Latin 'bulla', meaning a 'bubble' or 'rounded object', the same root that gives us 'ball'. By adding the agent suffix '-er', English created a noun for a person who bowls a ball, a usage that became firmly attached to cricket and later to ten-pin bowling. The 'bowler hat', a quite separate sense, was named not from rolling at all but from the London hat-makers Thomas and William Bowler, who manufactured the hard, round-crowned hat for a customer in 1849. By coincidence the surname Bowler itself derives from the same family of words for rounded things, so the round-topped hat carries a fittingly round-sounding name. The spelling is regular once you remember it is simply 'bowl' plus '-er', with no hidden letters to trip over.

How the word is built

• bowl (the verb, to roll a ball)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)