Treasurer

How to spell treasurer

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce treasurer

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does treasurer mean?

1. nounThe person responsible for managing and accounting for the money of a club, charity, company, or government body.

Treasurer in a sentence

• The club treasurer presented the annual accounts at the meeting.

• As treasurer of the charity, she signed every cheque over a thousand pounds.

Where does treasurer come from?

Language of origin: French

The word treasurer traces back through Old French tresorier to the Latin thesaurarius, meaning the keeper of a thesaurus, which to a Roman meant not a book of synonyms but a 'storehouse' or 'hoard'. That Latin thesaurus was itself borrowed from the Greek thesauros, again a treasure house or store, built on the idea of something set down and kept safe. English took 'treasure' from French in the 1100s and, with the agent ending -er already at hand, formed 'treasurer' for the official charged with guarding and managing a household's, church's, or kingdom's wealth. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the calm 'sure' sound is actually written 'sure' (as in the parent word treasure), and the word ends in a doubled run of unstressed -urer that writers easily slim down to a single -er. Remembering that a treasurer simply takes 'treasure' and adds '-r' keeps the awkward vowels in place.

How the word is built

• treasur- (from treasure: stored wealth)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)