Valet

How to spell valet

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce valet

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does valet mean?

1. nounA personal male attendant who looks after someone's clothes and needs, or an employee who parks guests' cars.
2. verbTo clean and tidy the interior and exterior of a car as a professional service.

Valet in a sentence

• noun

  The hotel valet took the keys and parked the car in the basement garage.

• verb

  The garage offered to valet the car while it was in for its service.

• noun

  As a personal valet, he pressed the suits and packed the travel bags each morning.

• verb

  He paid a local firm to valet the family saloon before putting it up for sale.

Where does valet come from?

Language of origin: French

This word came straight from French, where valet meant a manservant or attendant, and earlier from Old French vaslet, which described a young man or a squire still in training. That older form traces back to Medieval Latin vassallus, meaning a servant or retainer, the very same root that gives us the word vassal. The original sense centred on a male servant who looked after a gentleman's clothes and personal needs, and English adopted this meaning in the 1500s. Over time the job widened, so that by the modern era a valet could also be the hotel or restaurant employee who parks and fetches cars for guests. The French ancestry explains the spelling trap neatly: the word keeps its French shape, ending in -et, and in many accents that final t falls silent, leaving writers unsure whether to add the letters they cannot hear.

How the word is built

• valet (from Old French vaslet: young man, manservant); a single root borrowed whole, related to vassal