Fielder

How to spell fielder

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fielder

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fielder mean?

1. nounA player in cricket or baseball whose job is to stop, catch, or retrieve the ball when the opposing side is batting.

Fielder in a sentence

• The fielder sprinted across the boundary to stop the ball.

• A sharp catch by the fielder ended the batsman's innings.

Where does fielder come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word 'field' comes from the Old English 'feld', which meant open country or unploughed land free of forest, and it has cousins across the Germanic languages, including the Dutch 'veld'. Over the centuries 'field' broadened from any stretch of open ground to a marked-out area of play, which is why a cricket pitch or a baseball diamond is called a field. The agent suffix '-er', also native to Old English, simply turns a noun or verb into 'one who does it', so a fielder is literally someone who works the field by gathering and returning the ball. The sporting sense grew up alongside organised cricket in the 1700s and was carried into baseball in the 1800s. The spelling is reassuringly regular: keep the 'ie' of 'field' (it follows the familiar 'i before e' pattern) and add a plain '-er'.

How the word is built

• field (open land; the playing area in cricket or baseball)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)