Hamster

How to spell hamster

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce hamster

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does hamster mean?

1. nounA small short-tailed rodent with cheek pouches, commonly kept as a pet.

Hamster in a sentence

• The children fed the hamster a slice of cucumber.

• A hamster can store food in its cheek pouches for hours.

Where does hamster come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word came into English in the early 1600s directly from German, where Hamster is the name for the small burrowing rodent. The German word descends from Old High German hamustro, which appears to have meant something like 'corn-weevil' or 'grain-hoarder', a fitting label given the animal's famous habit of stuffing its cheek pouches with food. Many scholars trace it further back to a borrowing from an early Slavic source, comparing Old Russian chomestoru, though the exact path is debated. The sense fixed on the familiar cheek-pouched rodent that people now keep as a pet, and the spelling stayed close to the German original. Because it is essentially the German word carried whole into English, it keeps the simple 'ham' plus 'ster' shape that makes it easy to spell once you picture the two parts.

How the word is built

• hamster (single root, from German Hamster; no productive prefix or suffix)