Rudder

How to spell rudder

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rudder

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rudder mean?

1. nounA flat hinged blade at the stern of a boat or the tail of an aircraft used to control its direction.

Rudder in a sentence

• The helmsman swung the rudder hard to avoid the rocks.

• A jammed rudder left the small plane circling the airfield.

Where does rudder come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English rother, which originally meant a paddle or steering oar, the broad blade a sailor dragged through the water to set a boat's course. That noun grew from the same ancient Germanic root that gave us the verb 'row', so a rudder was literally the thing you rowed or steered with. As ships grew larger in the medieval period, the loose steering oar was replaced by a fixed blade hinged at the stern, and the name moved with the function. The doubled 'd' that trips writers up reflects the short, stressed first vowel; the modern spelling settled in this form by the late Middle English period. Close relatives survive in Dutch 'roer' and German 'Ruder', both still meaning oar or rudder, which underlines its deep North Sea seafaring roots.

How the word is built

• rudd- (from Old English rother: steering oar)
• -er (agent/instrument suffix)