Realtor

How to spell realtor

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce realtor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does realtor mean?

1. nounA person whose job is to arrange the sale, purchase, or rental of houses and land on behalf of clients.

Realtor in a sentence

• The realtor showed three condos before lunch.

• We hired a local realtor to list the family home.

Where does realtor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grew out of the American real-estate business in the early twentieth century. Its base is 'realty', meaning real property such as land and buildings, which itself traces to the Latin 'res', meaning 'thing' or 'matter', by way of the legal term 'real estate' (property that is fixed, as opposed to movable goods). To this base was added the agent suffix '-or', meaning 'one who does', producing a name for a person who deals in property. The term was coined deliberately in 1916 by Charles Chadbourn, a member of what became the National Association of Realtors, and in the United States 'Realtor' with a capital R remains a registered trademark for members of that body, while the lowercase 'realtor' is used generally for any estate agent. The spelling trap lives in the order of the letters: the word is spelled real-t-or, even though many speakers say it as 'ree-luh-ter', which tempts writers to insert an extra vowel and produce the wrong 'realator'.

How the word is built

• realt- (from realty: real property)
• -or (agent suffix: one who does)