Motorist

How to spell motorist

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce motorist

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does motorist mean?

1. nounA person who drives a motor car, especially on public roads.

Motorist in a sentence

• The new speed camera caught an unsuspecting motorist on the bypass.

• Every motorist in the city had to slow down for the roadworks.

Where does motorist come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is built from 'motor' plus the agent suffix '-ist'. 'Motor' comes from the Latin motor, meaning 'a mover', which was formed from the verb movere, 'to move'; the same root gives English 'motion', 'remove', and 'momentum'. For centuries 'motor' simply meant any moving force or device, but at the very end of the 1800s it attached itself to the new petrol-driven carriage, the 'motor car'. As these vehicles spread, English coined 'motorist' around the 1890s to name the person at the wheel, distinguishing the car driver from the cyclist or the horse-drawn coachman. The spelling is refreshingly regular: it is simply the familiar word 'motor' with '-ist' added, so the only thing to remember is the unstressed '-or-' in the middle, which sounds like a faint 'er' but is spelled with an o.

How the word is built

• motor (from Latin motor, a mover)
• -ist (noun suffix denoting a person who does or uses something)