Reader

How to spell reader

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce reader

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does reader mean?

1. nounA person who reads, especially one who reads books or a particular publication.
2. nounA printed collection of texts or extracts assembled for study or instruction.
3. nounIn British universities, a senior academic post ranking just below professor.

Reader in a sentence

• Every reader of the magazine received a free sample.

• The lecturer assigned a reader of nineteenth-century essays for the course.

• After years of research she was appointed reader in chemistry.

• The author thanked each loyal reader in the preface.

• Each chapter of the reader ended with discussion questions.

• The department promoted two lecturers to reader this term.

Where does reader come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the native English verb 'read', which comes from the Old English rǣdan, a verb that originally meant 'to advise, to counsel, or to interpret' before it narrowed to the modern sense of making sense of written marks. That older meaning of advising survives in the German cognate raten, 'to advise', and in the noun 'rede', once used for counsel or speech. The agent suffix -er, also inherited from Old English, simply turns the verb into 'one who reads', and the form 'reader' is recorded from the earliest periods of the language. Over time the word also picked up specialised senses: a published collection of texts for study, and, in British universities, a senior academic rank just below professor. Because the spelling follows the plain 'read' plus '-er' pattern, the only mild trap is remembering it keeps the 'ea' vowel of read rather than any phonetic respelling.

How the word is built

• read (Old English rǣdan: to read, advise)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)