Radiator

How to spell radiator

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce radiator

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does radiator mean?

1. nounA device, usually a set of metal panels or pipes, that warms a room by giving off heat.
2. nounThe component in a vehicle that cools the engine by dispersing heat from the circulating coolant.

Radiator in a sentence

• The bedroom radiator clanked all night as the heating came on.

• The car overheated when the radiator sprang a leak on the motorway.

• She hung the damp towels over the radiator to dry them.

• He topped up the coolant in the radiator before the long drive.

Where does radiator come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word grows out of the Latin radius, which literally meant a ray, a spoke of a wheel, or a thin rod. From radius the Romans formed the verb radiare, meaning 'to shine out' or 'to send out beams', and English took the verb 'radiate' from it in the early 1600s. Once you have a verb, English readily adds the Latin agent suffix -or to name the thing that performs the action, and so 'radiator' was coined in the nineteenth century for a device that gives off heat by radiation. The same radius root sits inside the familiar 'radius' of a circle, the 'radio' that broadcasts waves outward, and even the bone called the radius in your forearm. The spelling trap is the unstressed ending: it is -or, matching the Latin agent suffix, not the more common everyday -er, and the middle keeps the -ia- of 'radiate'.

How the word is built

• radi- (from radius: ray, beam)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -or (agent/instrument noun: a thing that does the action)