Drawer

How to spell drawer

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce drawer

What does drawer mean?

1. nounA sliding storage box that pulls out of a desk, chest or cabinet.
2. nounA person who draws something, such as pictures or, in banking, the person who writes a cheque.

Drawer in a sentence

• She kept the spare keys in the top drawer of the desk.

• As the drawer of the cheque, he was liable for the full amount.

• The cutlery rattled every time he opened the kitchen drawer.

• The bank returned the cheque to the drawer because the signature did not match.

Where does drawer come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the everyday verb 'draw', which descends from Old English 'dragan', meaning 'to pull, drag or haul'. Adding the agent and instrument suffix '-er' produced 'drawer', literally 'a thing that is pulled out' or 'a person who pulls or draws'. The furniture sense, the sliding box you pull open, is recorded from the early 1500s and names the box by the action of drawing it out. The same root sits behind 'drag' and 'draught', and the spelling trap is precisely that 'draw' keeps its full -aw- before the -er ending, even though the furniture sense is usually pronounced as a single syllable that sounds like 'draw'. Because the visible spelling preserves both the verb and the suffix, the temptation to drop a letter and write 'draw' or 'drawr' is exactly what catches writers out.

How the word is built

• draw (to pull, or to make a picture)
• -er (agent/instrument suffix)