Racer

How to spell racer

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce racer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does racer mean?

1. nounA person, animal, or vehicle that takes part in or is built for races of speed.

Racer in a sentence

• The cyclist trained every morning to become a faster racer.

• The new model is a lightweight racer designed for the track.

Where does racer come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Racer is built from the noun and verb 'race' plus the agent ending '-er', which marks the one who performs an action. The core word 'race', in the sense of a contest of speed, came into English from Old Norse 'ras', meaning a running or a rushing onward, brought over by Scandinavian settlers and surviving especially in northern dialects before spreading. This is a separate word from the 'race' that means a group of people, which arrived later from French and Italian; the two simply collapsed into the same spelling. By the late medieval period 'race' was firmly tied to running and competition, and once English speakers attached '-er' they had a tidy label for any runner, horse, or fast machine built for speed. The spelling keeps the silent final 'e' of 'race' even though the suffix follows, which is the small detail writers must remember: it is race plus er, not 'racr' or 'racor'.

How the word is built

• race (from Old Norse ras: a running, a rush)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)