Insurer

How to spell insurer

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce insurer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does insurer mean?

1. nounA company or person that provides insurance and agrees to pay for specified losses in return for premiums.

Insurer in a sentence

• The insurer rejected the flood claim on a technicality.

• After the storm she phoned her insurer to start a claim.

Where does insurer come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Insurer is built on the verb insure, which began life as a variant of ensure and traces back through Old French enseürer to the Latin securus, meaning 'free from care' or 'safe', from se- 'without' and cura 'care'. In medieval commerce, to insure something meant to make a person secure against loss, and by the 1600s the word had taken on its specifically financial sense of guaranteeing money against risk. The agent suffix -er was then attached to name the party that carries that risk, the one who promises to pay if disaster strikes. The same securus root sits inside the everyday words 'secure', 'sure', and 'assurance', which explains why the field of life cover is still called 'assurance' in Britain. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle: writers hear a soft schwa and may drop the 'u' or muddle the ending, but the steady spine of 'sure' inside the word keeps it on track.

How the word is built

• in- (variant of en-, 'to make')
• sure (certain, secure)
• -er (agent suffix, 'one who')