Loader

How to spell loader

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce loader

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does loader mean?

1. nounA vehicle or machine used to scoop up and load material such as earth, gravel, or rubble.
2. nounA program or component that copies software into memory so it can run.
3. nounA person whose job is to put goods or cargo onto a vehicle, ship, or aircraft.

Loader in a sentence

• The front loader scooped gravel into the waiting truck.

• The boot loader failed, so the laptop would not start the operating system.

• The baggage loader stacked the suitcases into the hold before departure.

• The site foreman hired a loader to clear the rubble after demolition.

• The developer wrote a small loader to pull the game assets into memory.

• Each loader on the dock wore a high-visibility vest and steel-toe boots.

Where does loader come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word is built from the verb 'load' plus the agent suffix '-er', which marks a person or thing that performs an action, exactly as in 'reader' or 'driver'. 'Load' itself goes back to Old English 'lad', which meant a way, a course, or a carrying, and which originally pointed to the act of conveying goods rather than the goods themselves. Over the medieval period the sense narrowed and shifted to mean the burden being carried, and the spelling settled into 'load' by the 1500s. The same Germanic root also gave English 'lade' (as in a ship being laden) and survives in 'bill of lading', the document listing cargo. 'Loader' as a tidy agent noun for a person or machine that loads is comparatively modern, gaining ground in industrial and later computing contexts; the spelling is regular, with the silent reminder that the long 'oa' of 'load' is simply kept before the suffix.

How the word is built

• load (to put a burden on)
• -er (agent suffix: one who or that which does)