Lighter

How to spell lighter

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce lighter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does lighter mean?

1. nounA small portable device that produces a flame to light cigarettes, candles, or a stove.
2. adjectiveComparative form of light, meaning having less weight than something else.
3. adjectiveComparative form of light, meaning paler or less dark in colour or brightness.

Lighter in a sentence

• noun

  She kept a lighter in her bag for the camping stove.

• adjective

  The aluminium frame is much lighter than the steel one.

• adjective

  She chose a lighter shade of grey for the hallway walls.

• noun

  The lighter ran out of fuel halfway through lighting the candles.

• adjective

  Packing fewer books made the suitcase noticeably lighter.

• adjective

  The morning sky grew lighter as the sun came up.

Where does lighter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This single spelling sits on top of two quite different Old English ancestors that happen to look identical in modern English. The brightness word descends from Old English lēoht, meaning 'illumination' or 'not dark', while the weight word comes from Old English līht or lēoht, meaning 'not heavy', and both go back to ancient Germanic roots. The comparative 'lighter' is simply one of these adjectives plus the ordinary English ending -er, the same ending that turns 'fast' into 'faster'. The noun for a small igniting device is the verb 'to light' joined to the agent suffix -er, the part that turns 'teach' into 'teacher', so it literally names a thing that lights. The boat sense, a flat barge used to unload ships in shallow water, was borrowed in the 1400s from Dutch lichter, related to the idea of making a vessel lighter by removing its cargo. Because every sense shares the same plain -er ending, the spelling itself is regular and rarely causes trouble.

How the word is built

• light (Old English lēoht/līht)
• -er (comparative or agent suffix)