Buyer
nounA person who purchases something, or one whose job is to select and purchase goods for a business.
How to spell buyer
5 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce buyer
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does buyer mean?
- nounA person who purchases something, or one whose job is to select and purchase goods for a business.
Buyer in a sentence
-
The buyer paid the deposit and signed the contract the same afternoon.
-
As the company buyer, she negotiates prices with every supplier.
Where does buyer come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This word is built on the native English verb 'buy', which traces back to the Old English bycgan, meaning 'to acquire something by paying for it'. That verb had relatives across the Germanic languages, though it eventually died out in most of them, leaving English as one of the few to keep it. The agent suffix '-er', also of Germanic origin, simply means 'a person who does the thing named', so a buyer is literally 'one who buys'. The spelling preserves the older 'y' from buy rather than switching to an 'i', which is the small trap: the word keeps buy whole and just adds -er. The same -er pattern produces seller, trader, and dealer, the everyday companions of buyer in commerce.
How the word is built
- buy (from Old English bycgan: to purchase)
- -er (agent suffix: one who does)
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.