Sitter

How to spell sitter

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce sitter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sitter mean?

1. nounA person who looks after a child, pet, or house for a short time while the owner or parent is away.
2. nounA person who poses for a painter, sculptor, or photographer.

Sitter in a sentence

• They hired a sitter so they could attend the evening concert.

• The artist asked the sitter to keep perfectly still.

• Our usual pet sitter feeds the cat twice a day.

• Each sitter in the gallery had posed for the same painter.

Where does sitter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Sitter is built on the very old verb sit, which comes from the Old English sittan, meaning 'to be seated' or 'to take a seat'. That verb traces back through the Germanic languages to an ancient root shared with the Latin sedere and the Greek hezesthai, all carrying the plain idea of resting on a surface. The agent suffix -er, also native to Old English, turns a verb into the person or thing that performs it, so a sitter is literally 'one who sits'. The everyday senses grew naturally from that base: a person who sits for a portrait, and later a person who sits with a child or a pet to mind them while the parents or owners are away. The spelling trap is simple but real; because the short vowel in sit is followed by a single t, English doubles the consonant before -er, giving sitter rather than the wrong 'siter'.

How the word is built

• sit (to be seated, from Old English sittan)
• doubled t
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)