Follower

How to spell follower

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce follower

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does follower mean?

1. nounA person who supports, admires, or subscribes to a leader, cause, or account.

Follower in a sentence

• The new policy gained a loyal follower in every department.

• Each new follower of her cooking channel gets a welcome message.

Where does follower come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb folgian, which meant to accompany, to attend upon, or to go after someone, and which is closely related to similar Germanic forms such as the Old High German folgen and the Dutch volgen. The base sense was very physical: walking behind a leader, a lord, or a guide. By attaching the everyday agent suffix -er, English simply named the person doing the following, and the noun is recorded from the early medieval period onward. Over time the meaning broadened from someone who literally walks behind to someone who supports a cause, a teacher, or a belief, and in the digital age it narrowed again to mean a person who subscribes to another's posts on a social network. The spelling is reassuringly regular, although the doubled letters of the cluster (the double l of follow and the single l that does not double again) can trip writers who second-guess themselves.

How the word is built

• follow (from Old English folgian: to accompany, attend)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)