Carpenter

How to spell carpenter

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce carpenter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does carpenter mean?

1. nounA skilled worker who builds and repairs things made of wood.

Carpenter in a sentence

• The carpenter measured the doorway before cutting the timber.

• We hired a carpenter to build the kitchen cabinets.

Where does carpenter come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin carpentum, which named a two-wheeled wagon or carriage, possibly borrowed by the Romans from a Gaulish (Celtic) word for such a cart. From it came carpentarius, meaning a maker of carriages, since the earliest skilled woodworkers built the wooden frames of wagons. English took the word in the 1300s through Anglo-Norman French carpentier, by which time the meaning had broadened from wheelwright to any craftsman who works in wood. The spelling preserves that French route, which is why the middle is spelt 'pen' with an unstressed vowel rather than the way it sounds. A useful memory hook is that the ordinary word 'carpentry' shares the same root, and the surname Carpenter simply records an ancestor's trade.

How the word is built

• carpent- (from Latin carpentum, a wagon or carriage)
• -er (agent suffix: one who makes)