Lawyer

How to spell lawyer

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lawyer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lawyer mean?

1. nounA person trained or qualified to advise clients and represent them in legal matters.

Lawyer in a sentence

• The family hired a lawyer to draft the will.

• Her lawyer reviewed every clause in the contract before she signed.

Where does lawyer come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The word lawyer is built on the noun law, which English took from the Old Norse word lagu, literally 'something laid down or fixed', the plural of lag meaning a layer or a thing placed in order. By the late 1300s English speakers had attached an agent ending to make a word for a person whose business is the law, appearing in Middle English as lawyer or lawier. The unusual -yer spelling is a softened form of the older -ier ending also seen in words like bowyer (a maker of bows) and sawyer (one who saws wood). Because the root is simply law with a y glued on before the ending, the spelling trap is remembering that single y, not the -ier you might expect by analogy with cashier or financier. The same Norse layer-and-order idea still lurks behind the modern sense of rules that are firmly set down.

How the word is built

• law (from Old Norse lagu: something laid down, a rule)
• -yer (agent suffix, a variant of -ier/-er meaning 'one who does')