Interviewer

How to spell interviewer

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce interviewer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does interviewer mean?

1. nounA person who asks questions of another, as for a job, a survey, or a broadcast.

Interviewer in a sentence

• The interviewer asked about her previous management experience.

• A skilled interviewer keeps the conversation relaxed and on topic.

Where does interviewer come from?

Language of origin: French

This word builds on 'interview', which English took in the sixteenth century from the French entrevue, a noun from the verb s'entrevoir meaning 'to see one another' or 'to meet'. The French verb combines entre, meaning 'between', with voir, 'to see', which descends from the Latin videre, 'to see', the same root that gives us 'vision' and 'video'. An interview was therefore literally a meeting where parties saw each other face to face, and only later did it narrow to the formal questioning of one person by another. The agent suffix '-er', a long-established English ending for 'one who does something', was then added to name the person conducting that questioning. Remembering that the middle hides 'view', the act of seeing, helps fix the spelling of the unstressed syllables.

How the word is built

• inter- (between)
• view (from Latin videre, to see, via French)
• -er (agent noun: one who does)