Identifier

How to spell identifier

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce identifier

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does identifier mean?

1. nounA name, number, or symbol used to recognise or distinguish a particular person or thing.

Identifier in a sentence

• Each customer record is tagged with a unique identifier.

• The barcode acts as the product's identifier at the checkout.

Where does identifier come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin idem, meaning 'the same', which gave rise to the Medieval Latin verb identificare, literally 'to make the same' or 'to treat as one'. English took identify from French identifier in the seventeenth century, originally meaning to regard two things as identical, and only later settling on the modern sense of recognising or pinpointing what something is. The agent ending -er, native to English, was then added to name the word, number, or marker that performs the identifying. The same idem root also sits inside 'identity' and 'identical', which explains the steady -identi- spine running through the spelling. Because the word is built so transparently from identify plus -er, the trap is less about its letters and more about keeping the -ifier ending (not -ifyer) intact.

How the word is built

• ident- (from Latin idem: the same)
• -ify (from -ficare: to make)
• -er (agent suffix: a thing that does)