Investor

How to spell investor

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce investor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does investor mean?

1. nounA person or organisation that commits money to a venture, asset, or business expecting a financial return.

Investor in a sentence

• Each investor received a quarterly report on the fund's performance.

• The startup pitched to a wealthy investor at the conference.

Where does investor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb investire, which literally meant 'to clothe' or 'to dress', built from in- 'in' and vestis 'a garment' (the same vestis that gives us 'vest' and 'vestment'). In medieval usage, to invest someone was to formally clothe them in the robes of an office, which is why we still speak of an 'investiture' when a person is ceremonially placed in a position of power. From this idea of furnishing or endowing someone, the sense shifted in seventeenth-century Italian commerce (investire) toward the idea of clothing your money in a new form by committing it to a venture for profit. English absorbed this financial meaning in the early 1600s, and the agent noun 'investor' simply names the person who does the investing. The spelling trap is the ending: it is -or, not the more common -er, a clue from its Latin agent-noun ancestry.

How the word is built

• in- (in, into)
• vest (from Latin vestire: to clothe)
• -or (agent noun suffix: one who does)