Firefighter

How to spell firefighter

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce firefighter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does firefighter mean?

1. nounA person trained and employed to extinguish fires and respond to related emergencies.

Firefighter in a sentence

• Every firefighter on the crew completed the breathing-apparatus drill.

• A veteran firefighter explained how the ladder truck reaches upper floors.

Where does firefighter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining the noun 'fire' to the agent noun 'fighter'. 'Fire' descends from Old English 'fyr', a native Germanic word for a burning blaze, closely related to Dutch 'vuur' and German 'Feuer'. 'Fighter' is built from the Old English verb 'feohtan', meaning to struggle or do battle, plus the agent suffix '-er' that names the person who performs an action. The literal idea is someone who fights fire, and the modern profession-focused term gradually replaced the older 'fireman' as a gender-neutral label, becoming common through the later twentieth century. Because every part is plain English, the only spelling care needed is remembering it is written as one solid word with the doubled 'gh' cluster carried over from 'fight'.

How the word is built

• fire (a burning, destructive blaze)
• fight (to combat or struggle against)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)