Rig

How to spell rig

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce rig

What does rig mean?

1. nounA piece of equipment or a structure assembled for a particular purpose, such as drilling, lighting, or transport.
2. verbTo fit out or assemble equipment, especially a boat with its sails and ropes.
3. verbTo arrange or manipulate something dishonestly in order to gain an unfair advantage.

Rig in a sentence

• noun

  The offshore drilling rig employed two hundred workers.

• verb

  The sailors had to rig the yacht before the morning race.

• verb

  The company tried to rig the bidding so its own contractor would win.

• noun

  The film crew set up a lighting rig above the stage.

• verb

  They will rig the tent with extra poles to withstand the wind.

• verb

  Observers accused the government of attempting to rig the election.

Where does rig come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The word rig first appears in English in the late 1400s as a nautical verb meaning to fit a ship with its ropes, sails, and tackle. Its earlier history is genuinely murky, but most scholars trace it to a Scandinavian source, comparing it with Norwegian and Swedish dialect words such as rigga, meaning to bind, wrap, or harness, suggesting the literal idea of lashing things into place. From the sense of fitting out a vessel it broadened to mean fitting out any apparatus or equipment, which is how we get the oil rig and the lighting rig. The sense of arranging something dishonestly, as in rigging an election, is a separate development and may actually come from an unrelated dialect word for a trick or prank; this is part of why the origin is described as uncertain. The spelling is mercifully simple, a short three letter word, so the only real trap is remembering that the doubled consonant appears only when you add an ending, as in rigging or rigged.

How the word is built

• rig (a single root verb/noun; no affixes)