Presenter

How to spell presenter

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce presenter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does presenter mean?

1. nounA person who introduces and hosts a broadcast, event, or programme.

Presenter in a sentence

• The news presenter read the evening bulletin with practised calm.

• As conference presenter, she welcomed each speaker to the stage.

Where does presenter come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb praesentare, meaning 'to place before' or 'to show', which itself was built on praesens, the present participle of praeesse, literally 'to be before' or 'to be at hand', from prae 'before' and esse 'to be'. English took the verb 'present' through Old French presenter during the 1300s, with the sense of offering or showing something to someone. The agent noun 'presenter', meaning a person who presents, was then formed in English by adding the everyday -er suffix. The broadcasting sense, a person who introduces or hosts a television or radio programme, grew up in Britain in the twentieth century. The spelling trap is the unstressed middle: the -sent- can be hard to pin down, and the ending is -er rather than -or, even though many similar agent nouns take -or.

How the word is built

• pre- (before, in front of)
• sent (from Latin praesentare: to place before, show)
• -er (agent noun: one who does)