Roller

How to spell roller

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce roller

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does roller mean?

1. nounA rotating cylinder used to flatten, spread, move, or shape something, or a small tube used to curl hair.
2. nounA long, heavy, swelling wave that rolls in toward the shore.

Roller in a sentence

• She loaded the paint roller and coated the wall in one smooth pass.

• A powerful roller lifted the small boat and carried it toward the beach.

• He flattened the new lawn with a heavy garden roller after seeding.

• Surfers waited offshore for the next big roller to form.

Where does roller come from?

Language of origin: French

Roller is built from the verb 'roll' plus the suffix '-er', which marks a thing that performs an action. 'Roll' itself reached English in the 1300s from the Old French verb 'roller' (also spelled 'roeler'), meaning 'to roll along', which traces back to the Latin 'rotulare', 'to revolve', and ultimately to 'rotula', meaning 'a little wheel', a diminutive of 'rota', 'wheel'. The same 'rota' root sits inside familiar words such as 'rotate', 'rotary' and 'rotation', all of which share the idea of turning around an axis. When the agent suffix '-er' was attached, the word came to name any rotating cylinder or anything that rolls, from a heavy garden cylinder to a wave that rolls onto the shore. The doubled 'l' is the only mild spelling trap, and it comes simply from keeping the full 'roll' before adding '-er'.

How the word is built

• roll (to turn over and over)
• -er (agent/instrument suffix denoting a thing that performs the action)