Kicker

How to spell kicker

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce kicker

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does kicker mean?

1. nounA person or animal that kicks, especially a player whose role is to kick the ball.
2. nounA surprising or decisive final detail that changes how a situation is viewed.

Kicker in a sentence

• The team signed a reliable kicker to handle every penalty.

• The salary sounded generous, but the kicker was the unpaid overtime.

• The young horse was a notorious kicker and frightened the stable hands.

• The holiday looked cheap, and the real kicker came when the booking fees appeared.

Where does kicker come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is simply the verb 'kick' with the agent suffix '-er' attached, so it literally means 'one who kicks' or 'a thing that kicks'. The verb 'kick' first appears in Middle English in the late 1300s, and its origin is genuinely obscure; scholars have never settled on a parent word, which is unusual for such an ordinary term. Some have linked it tentatively to an Old Norse word, but the evidence is thin, so it is safest to call it of uncertain origin. The agent ending '-er' is a thoroughly native Germanic suffix that English has used for centuries to turn verbs into nouns naming a doer, as in 'baker' and 'runner'. From the literal sporting sense of a person who kicks, the figurative meaning, a surprising final twist that 'kicks' you, developed in twentieth century journalism and conversation. The spelling is regular, with the doubled 'ck' from 'kick' simply carried straight into the longer word.

How the word is built

• kick (verb, of uncertain origin)
• -er (agent suffix: one who or that which performs the action)