Shutter

How to spell shutter

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shutter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shutter mean?

1. nounA hinged or sliding panel fixed over a window to block light or provide security.
2. nounThe mechanism in a camera that opens and closes to control how long light reaches the sensor or film.
3. verbTo close something with panels, or to close a business permanently.

Shutter in a sentence

• noun

  A loose shutter banged against the wall all through the storm.

• noun

  A faster shutter speed froze the runner in mid stride.

• verb

  Rising rents forced the family bakery to shutter for good.

• noun

  They painted every wooden shutter a deep navy blue.

• noun

  The photographer cleaned the shutter before the long exposure.

• verb

  Staff would shutter the kiosk windows before the night shift.

Where does shutter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Shutter is built straight from the everyday English verb 'shut', which comes from the Old English scyttan, meaning to bolt or fasten a door, and is related to the idea of shooting a bolt across to secure something. Adding the agent suffix -er produced a word for the thing that does the shutting, and by the late 1500s 'shutter' was the standard name for a hinged panel that closes over a window. When photography arrived in the nineteenth century, the same word was borrowed for the mechanical device that briefly opens and closes to let light reach the film. The double t reflects the short, stressed 'shut' inside it, and the word is easy to muddle with 'shudder', which means to tremble; the two differ only by a single consonant. Remembering that a shutter literally shuts keeps the spelling anchored to its plain English root.

How the word is built

• shut (to close)
• -er (agent/instrument suffix: the thing that closes)