Exporter

How to spell exporter

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce exporter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exporter mean?

1. nounA person, company, or country that sells and sends goods to another country.

Exporter in a sentence

• The firm became a major exporter of medical equipment to Europe.

• As the leading wine exporter in the region, they ship millions of bottles each year.

Where does exporter come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built on the verb 'export', which English assembled in the late 1400s from the Latin exportare, meaning 'to carry out' or 'to bring out of a place'. That Latin verb joins the prefix ex-, meaning 'out', to portare, meaning 'to carry', the same root that gives us 'porter', 'portable', and 'transport'. The agent suffix -er was then attached in the ordinary English way to name the person or company that carries goods out of a country for sale abroad. The spelling trap sits in that ending: although the parallel Latin agent ending -or appears in many trade and business words, 'exporter' takes the native English -er, so it is spelled with -er rather than -or. Remembering the everyday word 'porter', the one who carries, helps fix both the central 'port' and the carrying sense.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• port (from Latin portare: to carry)
• -er (agent noun suffix: one who does)