Master

How to spell master

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce master

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does master mean?

1. nounA person who has authority over others or complete skill in a craft or subject.
2. verbTo gain complete skill in or full control over something.
3. adjectiveMain or controlling; serving as the original or principal version.

Master in a sentence

• noun

  The fencing master trained students every morning at the academy.

• verb

  It took him months to master the new accounting software.

• adjective

  The master key opens every room in the building.

• noun

  After twenty years at the bench, she was recognised as a master of her trade.

• verb

  She practised daily to master the difficult piano piece.

• adjective

  The editor kept the master copy of the manuscript in a locked drawer.

Where does master come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word reaches back to the Latin magister, meaning 'chief', 'director', or 'teacher', a word built on magis, meaning 'more' or 'greater', so a magister was literally the greater person in a relationship. Old English borrowed an early form as mægester, used for a man in authority or a teacher, and that native form was later reinforced and reshaped by the Old French maistre during the centuries after the Norman Conquest. From the medieval sense of a man who controls servants, apprentices, or a craft, the word broadened into ideas of skill and command, giving us both the master of a trade and the verb meaning to gain full control of something. The same magister root surfaces in 'magistrate', 'magisterial', and even the title 'mister', which is simply a worn-down spoken form of master. Because the vowel in the first syllable is so plain and the ending is the familiar -er, the spelling rarely trips adults up.

How the word is built

• mast- (from Latin magister: chief, teacher)
• -er (agent/comparative-style ending)