Shopper

How to spell shopper

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shopper

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shopper mean?

1. nounA person who visits shops or stores to look at or buy goods.

Shopper in a sentence

• Every shopper in the queue was waiting for the sale to open.

• The busy car park made it hard for any shopper to find a space.

Where does shopper come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word builds on shop, which traces back to the Old English sceoppa, meaning a small booth, shed, or stall where goods were sold or work was done. By the Middle Ages shop had come to mean a place of retail trade, and the verb to shop, meaning to visit such places to buy goods, followed naturally. Adding the familiar agent suffix -er produced shopper, literally a person who shops, a formation that became common in the nineteenth century as town and city retail expanded. The doubled p in shopper reflects the standard English rule of doubling a single final consonant after a short stressed vowel before a vowel suffix, the same pattern seen in stopper and chopper. That doubling is the only real spelling point to remember, since a single p would suggest a different vowel sound.

How the word is built

• shop (place of trade, from Old English sceoppa: a booth or stall)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)