Buzzer

How to spell buzzer

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce buzzer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does buzzer mean?

1. nounAn electrical or mechanical device that produces a harsh humming or buzzing sound as a signal or alert.

Buzzer in a sentence

• The contestant slammed the buzzer to answer first.

• Press the buzzer at the gate and the porter will let you in.

Where does buzzer come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from 'buzz', an imitative or onomatopoeic word coined in English around the sixteenth century to mimic the low, continuous humming sound made by bees and flies. English has many such echoic creations, where the spelling tries to capture a noise directly, and 'buzz' settled on a doubled z to suggest that sustained, vibrating drone. The agent suffix '-er', inherited from Old English and used to name a person or thing that carries out an action, was attached to give 'buzzer', literally 'a thing that buzzes'. As electrical signalling devices appeared in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 'buzzer' was the natural label for the small apparatus that produced a harsh humming tone to summon or alert. The spelling trap is simply the doubled z, which mirrors the doubled noise the word imitates.

How the word is built

• buzz (imitative root for a low humming sound)
• -er (suffix naming a device that performs the action)