Pier

How to spell pier

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pier

What does pier mean?

1. nounA long platform built out from the shore over water, used for landing boats or for walking and leisure.
2. nounA solid vertical column or mass of masonry that supports an arch, a bridge span, or a wall.

Pier in a sentence

• The fishing boats moored along the wooden pier at dawn.

• Engineers inspected each stone pier holding up the railway bridge.

• Families strolled to the end of the pier to watch the sunset over the sea.

• The cathedral roof rests on one massive brick pier beside the window.

Where does pier come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word arrived in Middle English around the twelfth or thirteenth century from the Medieval Latin pera, a term used for a supporting structure or a breakwater, and it reached English through Anglo-French. The ultimate source of that Latin word is genuinely uncertain, and scholars have never agreed on it, though some connect it to the same family that gives us the idea of a stone support. The earliest English meaning was the solid pillar or mass of masonry that carries the arch of a bridge or holds up a building, and only later did the sense widen to the long platform built out over water at a harbour or seaside resort. The seaside meaning is now the most familiar one, so it is easy to forget the word still names the masonry pillars of a bridge. The spelling trap is real: pier sounds exactly like peer, yet keeps the -ier ending, a clue worth holding onto since it shares that look with quay-side words rather than with peer or pierce.

How the word is built

• pier (single root from Medieval Latin pera, a support or breakwater); no prefix or suffix

Words that sound like pier

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• peer: A person of the same age, status, or ability as another.