Coworker

How to spell coworker

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce coworker

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does coworker mean?

1. nounA person you work with, especially someone in the same workplace or team.

Coworker in a sentence

• A friendly coworker offered to cover my shift on Friday.

• She trained the new coworker on the inventory system.

Where does coworker come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a compound built from two pieces that English has carried for a very long time. The first element, the prefix co-, comes from the Latin cum, meaning 'with' or 'together', and it shows up in dozens of partnership words such as cooperate, coexist, and coauthor. The second element, work, is thoroughly native: it descends from the Old English weorc, meaning 'labour, deed, or task', which itself goes back to the same ancient root that gave Greek its ergon ('work', the source of 'energy'). The agent suffix -er, marking the person who performs an action, is likewise an old English ending. The full term came together as a straightforward modern compound for someone who works alongside you, and it became common in the twentieth century as workplaces grew. The chief spelling trap is whether to glue it solid (coworker), hyphenate it (co-worker), or split it; American usage favours the solid form, while British and Canadian writers often keep the hyphen.

How the word is built

• co- (together, jointly)
• work (labour, from Old English weorc)
• -er (person who does something)