Broadcaster

How to spell broadcaster

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce broadcaster

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does broadcaster mean?

1. nounA company or station that transmits radio or television programmes to the public.
2. nounA person who presents or commentates on radio or television programmes.

Broadcaster in a sentence

• The national broadcaster secured the rights to televise the tournament.

• The veteran broadcaster interviewed three prime ministers during his career.

• A public broadcaster relies on licence fees rather than advertising.

• She trained as a sports broadcaster before moving into the news studio.

Where does broadcaster come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a compound built from two very old pieces of English. 'Broad' descends from the Old English 'brad', meaning wide or expansive, while 'cast' was borrowed from the Old Norse 'kasta', meaning to throw or fling. Long before radio existed, 'broadcast' was a farming term describing the act of scattering seed widely by hand across a field rather than sowing it in neat rows. When wireless transmission arrived in the early twentieth century, the image of scattering something widely was reused for sending a signal out to many listeners at once, and the agent suffix '-er' produced 'broadcaster' for the person or organisation doing the sending. Knowing the seed-scattering history helps fix the spelling, since both halves, 'broad' and 'cast', remain whole and unchanged inside the word.

How the word is built

• broad (wide)
• cast (throw, scatter)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)