Cooler

How to spell cooler

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cooler

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cooler mean?

1. nounAn insulated box or bag used to keep food and drinks cold.
2. adjectiveLower in temperature, or more fashionable or calm, than something else.

Cooler in a sentence

• noun

  They packed sandwiches and ice into the cooler before the long drive.

• adjective

  The evenings grow much cooler once autumn arrives.

• noun

  A portable cooler kept the drinks chilled all afternoon at the beach.

• adjective

  The basement stays cooler than the upstairs rooms in summer.

Where does cooler come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on 'cool', which descends from the Old English 'col', meaning moderately cold or calm, a word with solid Germanic roots shared with the Dutch 'koel' and the German 'kuhl'. The same family also gave English the related word 'cold', so the two have always been close cousins in both sound and sense. The ending '-er' does double duty here: as a comparative suffix it turns an adjective into 'more cool', and as an agent suffix it names a thing that cools, which is how the noun for an insulated container arose. The container sense became especially common in the twentieth century with the rise of portable iceboxes for picnics and road trips. The spelling trap is simply the doubled vowel of 'cool' carried straight through, with no second 'o' added or dropped before the '-er'.

How the word is built

• cool (from Old English col: cold, calm)
• -er (comparative / agent suffix)