Dispatcher

How to spell dispatcher

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce dispatcher

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dispatcher mean?

1. nounA person who coordinates and sends out vehicles, personnel, or goods, especially for transport or emergency services.

Dispatcher in a sentence

• The dispatcher radioed the nearest ambulance to the accident site.

• Every taxi driver checks in with the dispatcher before starting a shift.

Where does dispatcher come from?

Language of origin: Italian

This word grows out of the verb dispatch, which English picked up in the early 1500s from the Romance languages, probably the Italian dispacciare or the Spanish despachar, both meaning to send off in a hurry or to expedite. Those verbs trace back through Latin to a core idea of freeing something from an obstacle so it can move quickly, the opposite of being impeded. Once dispatch settled into English with the sense of sending people, vehicles, or messages off without delay, the agent suffix -er was added to name the person who does the sending. A dispatcher, then, is literally one who gets things on their way fast. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the soft -tch- cluster and the unstressed final -er rather than -or, which is the ending many writers expect for an occupational title.

How the word is built

• dis- (intensive/away)
• patch (from dispatch: to send off promptly)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)