Boxer

How to spell boxer

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce boxer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does boxer mean?

1. nounA person who fights with the fists as a sport, usually within a roped ring.
2. nounA medium-sized, short-haired breed of dog with a square muzzle and a muscular build.

Boxer in a sentence

• The veteran boxer trained for months before the title fight.

• Their energetic boxer chased the ball across the garden.

• Each boxer stepped onto the scales at the official weigh-in.

• The breeder showed us a fawn boxer with a white chest.

Where does boxer come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the verb 'box', meaning to fight with the fists, which appears in English in the late 1500s; the older noun 'box' meant a blow or a buffet, possibly related to a Middle Dutch or Middle Low German word for striking, though the exact source is debated. The agent suffix '-er', inherited from Old English, attaches to a verb to name the person who performs the action, so a boxer is literally 'one who boxes'. The sporting sense was firmly established by the 1700s as prizefighting became a public spectacle. The dog breed took its name later, in the late nineteenth century, from German breeders; the popular story is that the dog appears to 'box' with its front paws, though some link it to an older hunting-dog name. Because the spelling simply joins the familiar word 'box' to '-er', the trap is small, but the soft 'x' sound (a 'ks' blend) can occasionally tempt a phonetic misspelling.

How the word is built

• box (to fight with fists)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)