Camper

How to spell camper

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce camper

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does camper mean?

1. nounA person who stays outdoors in a tent or similar shelter, often for recreation.
2. nounA motor vehicle or trailer fitted with beds and basic facilities for travelling and sleeping.

Camper in a sentence

• Every camper was told to store food away from the tents.

• They parked the camper beside the lake and unfolded the awning.

• The experienced camper packed a stove, a map and a first aid kit.

• The rented camper had a tiny kitchen and a fold-out bed.

Where does camper come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The root of camper is the Latin campus, which literally meant an open level field or plain, the same word that gave us the military 'field' where soldiers pitched their tents. Through Old French and Italian the sense of a soldiers' encampment passed into English as 'camp' in the sixteenth century, still tied to the idea of an army resting in the open. The verb 'to camp', meaning to live outdoors under canvas, grew naturally from this, and once English added the agent suffix -er the result was 'camper', a person who camps. The newer meaning, a small wheeled vehicle fitted for sleeping and travel, arose in the early twentieth century as motoring spread, since the vehicle was simply a thing for camping. The same campus root, fittingly, still names the open grounds of a college today.

How the word is built

• camp (from Latin campus: open field)
• -er (agent/object suffix)