Distributor

How to spell distributor

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce distributor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does distributor mean?

1. nounA person or company that supplies goods to shops or businesses.
2. nounA device in an older petrol engine that routes electric current to each spark plug in turn.

Distributor in a sentence

• The regional distributor ships our stock every Monday.

• The mechanic replaced the worn distributor cap to fix the misfire.

• The brand signed an exclusive distributor for the European market.

• A faulty distributor can stop the spark plugs firing in the right order.

Where does distributor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb distribuere, meaning 'to divide up' or 'to deal out in shares', which was built from dis- 'apart' and tribuere 'to allot or assign'. That root tribuere originally referred to dividing something among the tribus, the tribes of ancient Rome, so a sense of parcelling things out among groups sits right at the heart of the word. English took the noun in through Latin and Old French, with 'distribute' established by the 1400s and the agent form 'distributor' following to name the person or company that hands goods on to others. The same tribuere root surfaces in everyday relatives such as 'tribute', 'contribute' and 'attribute', all sharing the notion of assigning or giving. The spelling trap is the unstressed ending, which sounds like a vague 'er' but is written -or, plus the single t in the middle that tempts writers toward a doubled letter.

How the word is built

• dis- (apart, separately)
• tribut (from Latin tribuere: to allot or assign)
• -or (agent noun suffix: one who or that which does)