Timer

How to spell timer

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce timer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does timer mean?

1. nounA device or program that measures elapsed time or counts down to signal when a set period has finished.

Timer in a sentence

• She set the kitchen timer for twelve minutes before putting the bread in the oven.

• The phone has a built-in timer that beeps when your laundry cycle ends.

Where does timer come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word is built on the native English noun time, which descends from the Old English tīma, meaning a stretch or point of time, itself rooted in a Germanic source linked to the idea of a fixed interval. To this base English added the suffix -er, the same ending that turns a verb or noun into the name of a thing or person that does the job, as in cooker, opener, and worker. Although time has existed in English for well over a thousand years, the form timer is much younger; it spread in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries alongside clockwork mechanisms, photography, and later kitchen and electronic devices that count off seconds and minutes. The spelling is reassuringly regular: keep the silent e of time before the -er, so it is time plus er, not the doubled-consonant pattern of words like runner. Because the base word is so familiar, the chief thing to remember is simply that the e survives in the middle.

How the word is built

• time (from Old English tīma: a period or point of time)
• -er (suffix forming a tool or device that performs an action)