Narrator

How to spell narrator

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce narrator

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does narrator mean?

1. nounA person who tells a story or provides spoken commentary, especially in a book, film, or documentary.

Narrator in a sentence

• The documentary's calm narrator explained each step of the rescue.

• In this novel the narrator never reveals his own name.

Where does narrator come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb narrare, meaning 'to tell' or 'to relate a story', which in turn grew out of the adjective gnarus, meaning 'knowing' or 'acquainted with'. That older sense is revealing: to narrate originally implied passing on what you knew, and the same gnarus root lies behind the English word 'ignorant', literally a person who does not know. English added the Latin agent suffix -or, which marks the doer of an action, to give us the one who tells. The word arrived through Latin and Old French routes and settled into English in the seventeenth century to mean a person who recounts events or tells a story. The chief spelling trap is the ending: writers are tempted to finish it with the more common -er, but because the word is built directly on a Latin agent noun it keeps the Latin -or.

How the word is built

• narrat- (from Latin narrare: to tell, relate)
• -or (agent suffix: one who does)