Labrador

How to spell labrador

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce labrador

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does labrador mean?

1. nounA popular breed of retriever with a short dense coat, often kept as a family pet or working dog.

Labrador in a sentence

• The family adopted a golden labrador from the local rescue centre.

• A well-trained labrador makes an excellent guide dog for the blind.

Where does labrador come from?

Language of origin: Other

The word traces back to the Portuguese lavrador, which literally meant a 'landholder', 'farmer', or 'ploughman', from the verb lavrar, 'to work the land'. It became a place name when the explorer Joao Fernandes Lavrador, who carried the surname as his trade, charted the rugged Atlantic coast of north-eastern Canada around 1500, and the region of Labrador took his name. The dog now called the labrador actually developed from the water dogs of nearby Newfoundland, but because British sailors and traders associated the animals with that whole coastline, the breed picked up the Labrador name in the early 1800s. By the time English speakers were writing about the dogs, the Portuguese trade-name origin had been completely forgotten, which is why the spelling keeps the single 'b' and the -dor ending that look odd to anyone expecting an English word. The everyday lowercase 'labrador' for the dog therefore preserves, quite invisibly, a Portuguese farmer's job title.

How the word is built

• labrador (from Portuguese lavrador: landholder, ploughman) used as a proper name, now a common noun for the breed