Spinner

How to spell spinner

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce spinner

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does spinner mean?

1. nounA person or thing that spins or rotates, such as a small spinning toy or a device that turns.
2. nounIn cricket, a bowler who makes the ball turn sharply off the pitch by spinning it.
3. nounA fishing lure with a revolving metal blade that flashes to attract fish.

Spinner in a sentence

• The children begged for a fidget spinner at the toy shop.

• The captain brought on his best spinner to exploit the dry pitch.

• He tied a bright spinner to the line and cast toward the reeds.

• The laundry spinner in the machine wrung most of the water from the towels.

• As a leg spinner he could make the ball deviate either way.

• The silver spinner flashed as it was reeled through the clear water.

Where does spinner come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows directly from the native English verb 'spin', which comes from the Old English 'spinnan', meaning to draw out and twist fibres into thread. That verb belonged to a wider Germanic family, with close cousins in Dutch 'spinnen' and German 'spinnen', all carrying the same idea of twisting wool or flax onto a spindle. The agent ending '-er' was attached to mean a person or device that spins, and over the centuries 'spinner' broadened from someone working at a spinning wheel to almost anything that rotates, from a cricket bowler who imparts spin to a ball to a metal fishing lure that revolves in water. The doubled 'n' is the small spelling trap: because 'spin' ends in a single consonant after a short stressed vowel, that consonant doubles before the '-er' suffix, exactly as in 'runner' and 'winner'. The same root also lies behind the word 'spider', literally the creature that spins.

How the word is built

• spin (verb: to twist fibre or rotate)
• -n- (doubled consonant after a short stressed vowel)
• -er (agent/instrument suffix: one who or that which does)