Rollercoaster

How to spell rollercoaster

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce rollercoaster

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rollercoaster mean?

1. nounAn amusement-park railway with steep climbs, sudden drops, and tight turns designed to thrill riders.
2. nounA situation marked by rapid, unpredictable swings between highs and lows.

Rollercoaster in a sentence

• The tallest rollercoaster in the park climbs sixty metres before its first drop.

• The past year of buying our first house was an emotional rollercoaster for the whole family.

• We queued for forty minutes to ride the wooden rollercoaster at the seaside fair.

• The company's share price has been on a rollercoaster since the merger was announced.

Where does rollercoaster come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a modern compound from the verbs 'roll' and 'coast', both of which travel a long way back. 'Roll' came into English in the 1300s from Old French 'roler', itself from Latin 'rotula', a little wheel, the diminutive of 'rota' meaning wheel. 'Coast' arrived from Old French 'coste', from Latin 'costa' meaning rib or side, which first meant the edge of land by the sea and later the act of gliding downhill without effort. The fairground machine that joined the two words was an American invention of the late 1800s, originally written as two separate words, 'roller coaster', for a car that rolled along a track and then coasted down its dips. The closed-up single-word spelling spread through everyday use in the twentieth century, which is exactly why writers still hesitate over whether it is one word or two.

How the word is built

• roller (from roll
• -er: a thing that rolls)
• coaster (from coast
• -er: a thing that coasts or glides)