Landowner

How to spell landowner

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce landowner

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does landowner mean?

1. nounA person or organisation that owns land, especially a large amount of it.

Landowner in a sentence

• The local landowner leased several fields to the dairy farm.

• As the new landowner, she was responsible for maintaining the boundary fences.

Where does landowner come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining 'land' and 'owner', both of which descend from Old English. 'Land' comes from the Old English 'land', meaning ground, soil, or territory, a word shared across the Germanic languages and unchanged in spelling for over a thousand years. 'Owner' is built on the verb 'own', from the Old English 'agnian', meaning to possess or to have as one's own, with the agent suffix '-er' that marks the person who does something. The two parts were welded together into a single noun by the 1700s as questions of property and estate became central to law and politics. Because every piece is so familiar, the only real spelling care is remembering it is one solid word with the silent-feeling join between 'land' and 'owner', not 'land owner' or 'landowener'.

How the word is built

• land (ground, property)
• own (to possess)
• -er (one who does)