Starter

How to spell starter

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce starter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does starter mean?

1. nounThe first course of a meal, served before the main course.
2. nounAn electric motor or mechanism that sets an engine running.
3. nounA live culture of yeast and bacteria used to begin a fermentation, as in baking bread.
4. nounA person or thing that starts something, such as the official who begins a race.

Starter in a sentence

• The soup arrived as a light starter before the roast.

• The mechanic replaced the faulty starter in the old van.

• She fed the sourdough starter with flour and water each morning.

• The starter raised the flag and the runners surged forward.

• We shared a prawn starter while waiting for the mains.

• A worn starter can stop the car turning over on cold mornings.

Where does starter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the verb 'start', which descends from Old English styrtan and its Middle English form sterten, meaning to leap up, move suddenly, or rush forward. That sense of a sudden jolt into motion is preserved when we 'start' at a loud noise, and it gradually broadened to mean simply 'to begin'. The agent suffix '-er', also of Germanic origin, was added to form a noun for the person or thing that does the starting, a pattern English uses freely (worker, opener, heater). From there the word took on a cluster of practical meanings: the official who starts a race, the device that turns over an engine, the live culture that begins a fermentation, and, in British dining, the dish that begins a meal. The straightforward spelling rarely trips writers, since it is simply 'start' plus '-er' with no doubled or dropped letters.

How the word is built

• start (to begin)
• -er (agent/instrument noun suffix)