Downer

How to spell downer

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce downer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does downer mean?

1. nounSomething that makes you feel sad, discouraged, or deflated.

Downer in a sentence

• Losing the contract at the last minute was a real downer for the whole team.

• The gloomy weather on the first day of the holiday was a bit of a downer.

Where does downer come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The core of this word is the everyday adverb and preposition 'down', which traces back to the Old English phrase 'ofdūne', literally meaning 'off the hill' or 'from the height'; over time the longer phrase was worn down to the single word 'down'. The element 'dūn' itself meant a hill or open upland, a sense that still survives in place names like the South Downs. By adding the agent-style suffix '-er', English speakers in the twentieth century coined 'downer' to label something that brings the spirits low, with the slang sense first surfacing in mid-1900s American speech. The same casual coinage gave the drug-culture meaning of a sedative or depressant, contrasted with an 'upper'. Because the word is built so transparently from 'down' plus '-er', its spelling rarely trips anyone up, though the single 'n' is worth noting since 'down' never doubles its consonant.

How the word is built

• down (from Old English ofdūne: off the hill, downward)
• -er (noun suffix)