Stretcher

How to spell stretcher

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce stretcher

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does stretcher mean?

1. nounA framed canvas or fabric bed on which an injured or sick person is carried.
2. nounA brick or stone laid lengthwise so its long side is visible along the face of a wall.

Stretcher in a sentence

• The paramedics lifted the patient onto a stretcher and wheeled him to the ambulance.

• The bricklayer set each stretcher end to end along the course of the wall.

• Two volunteers carried the collapsed runner off the track on a stretcher.

• The pattern alternates a header with a stretcher for added strength.

Where does stretcher come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows directly out of the verb 'stretch', which comes from the Old English streccan, meaning 'to extend, to draw out, or to spread'. That verb belongs to the broader Germanic family and is related to words like 'straight' and to the idea of pulling something taut. By adding the instrument suffix '-er', English produced a noun naming a thing that stretches or, more practically, a thing on which a body is laid out flat and extended. The sense of a portable frame for carrying the sick or injured took hold by the early 1800s, capturing the idea of a person stretched out at full length. The same root also gives us the bricklayer's 'stretcher', a brick laid lengthwise so its long face is stretched along the wall, which shows how the literal sense of extending stayed alive in the trades.

How the word is built

• stretch (from Old English streccan: to extend or draw out)
• -er (noun suffix forming an instrument or agent)