Tanner

How to spell tanner

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tanner

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tanner mean?

1. nounA person whose trade is converting animal hides into leather.
2. nounA lotion or device used to darken the skin.

Tanner in a sentence

• The medieval tanner worked beside the river to rinse the hides.

• She applied a gradual tanner before the holiday.

• Every belt in the shop came from a single skilled tanner.

• The salon sold a spray tanner that lasted a week.

Where does tanner come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from the verb 'tan' plus the agent suffix '-er', so it literally names a person who tans. The verb 'tan' comes from Old English 'tannian', meaning 'to convert animal hide into leather', which in turn was borrowed from the Medieval Latin 'tannare', 'to tan a hide'. The Latin form is often traced to a word for oak bark, since crushed oak bark supplied the tannins that cured the skins, and the chemical term 'tannin' preserves that same root. By the time English settled into its modern spelling, the doubled 'n' simply followed the ordinary rule that a short stressed vowel doubles the following consonant before '-er', the same pattern seen in 'runner' and 'winner'. The slang use of 'tanner' for the old British sixpence is a separate and uncertain development from the nineteenth century, possibly from a Romany or Latin source, and its origin has never been settled.

How the word is built

• tan (to convert hide into leather, from Old English tannian)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)