Rider

How to spell rider

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rider

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rider mean?

1. nounA person who travels on or controls a horse, bicycle, motorcycle, or other vehicle.
2. nounAn additional clause or condition attached to an existing contract, bill, or policy.

Rider in a sentence

• The cyclist was a careful rider who always signalled at junctions.

• The senator attached a controversial spending rider to the housing bill.

• Each rider wore a helmet before entering the show ring.

• Our landlord added a rider to the lease covering the use of the garage.

Where does rider come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grew straight out of the native English verb ride, which in Old English was ridan and meant to travel on horseback or to be carried along. The agent form ridere, literally one who rides, is recorded in Old English and shares roots with similar words across the Germanic languages, including the Dutch rijder and the German Reiter. For centuries the noun simply named a person on a horse, then later a bicycle, motorcycle, or any vehicle. By the seventeenth century lawyers had borrowed it for a second, very different sense: an extra clause that quite literally rides along on top of an existing document, attached to a contract, bill, or insurance policy. Because the spelling follows the plain pattern of ride plus -er, the trap is small, mainly the temptation to double the d, which the long vowel does not require.

How the word is built

• ride (from Old English ridan: to travel on horseback)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)