Vendor

How to spell vendor

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce vendor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vendor mean?

1. nounA person or company that sells goods or services, especially as a supplier to a business.

Vendor in a sentence

• The company switched to a cheaper vendor for office supplies.

• Each street vendor paid a small fee for a market stall.

Where does vendor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb vendere, meaning 'to sell', which was itself a contraction of the phrase venum dare, literally 'to give for sale'. From this verb English drew the act of vending, and the agent noun was formed with the Latin-derived ending -or, marking the person who sells. The form arrived through Anglo-French legal language, where 'vendor' named the party selling property in a contract, and it has kept that formal, commercial flavour ever since. The same vendere root sits inside the everyday 'vending machine' and the verb 'vend', which is a useful reminder that the word turns on the act of selling. The main spelling trap is the ending: it takes -or rather than the more common -er, a Latin agent ending that survived from its legal origins.

How the word is built

• vend (from Latin vendere: to sell)
• -or (agent suffix: one who does)