Editor

How to spell editor

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce editor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does editor mean?

1. nounA person who prepares, corrects, or selects written, visual, or audio material for publication or broadcast.
2. nounA computer program used to create or modify text, code, images, or other files.

Editor in a sentence

• The editor asked the journalist to cut two paragraphs from the article.

• He pasted the code into a plain text editor to strip out the formatting.

• She worked for years as a magazine editor before launching her own imprint.

• The photo editor on her laptop crashed before she could save the changes.

Where does editor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes directly from the Latin editor, an agent noun meaning 'one who produces or puts forth', built on the verb edere 'to give out' or 'to publish', which itself combines e- (a form of ex-, meaning 'out') with dare 'to give'. In classical and medieval Latin an editor could be the person who issued a book, presented public games, or otherwise brought something forth into public view. English adopted the word in the seventeenth century, at first for a person who published a work, and by the eighteenth century it settled into the modern sense of someone who prepares, corrects, and arranges other people's writing for publication. The familiar verb 'edit' is actually a back-formation from 'editor', coined later once the noun was well established. The same dare 'to give' root surfaces in everyday words like 'donate' and 'tradition', and the -or ending (rather than -er) is the spelling trap, since it follows the Latin agent pattern.

How the word is built

• e- (out, from ex-)
• dit (give, from Latin dare)
• -or (agent noun: one who does)