Winner

How to spell winner

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce winner

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does winner mean?

1. nounA person, team, or thing that wins a contest, prize, or competition.

Winner in a sentence

• The winner of the raffle collected a brand new bicycle.

• Judges announced the winner of the design award after a long debate.

Where does winner come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built on the verb 'win', which descends from the Old English 'winnan', a verb that originally meant 'to labour, struggle, or fight' rather than simply 'to triumph'. That sense of strenuous effort is shared with related words across the Germanic family, such as Old Norse 'vinna' and German 'gewinnen', all carrying ideas of working hard to gain something. Over the centuries the meaning narrowed from the general struggle to the prize gained at the end of it, so 'win' came to mean securing victory or reward. The agent ending '-er', also native Germanic, attaches to verbs to name the person or thing that performs the action, exactly as in 'runner' or 'singer'. The spelling trap is the doubled 'n': because the stressed vowel is short, the consonant doubles before '-er', giving 'winner' rather than the single-n 'winer'.

How the word is built

• win (to succeed, from Old English winnan)
• -n- (doubled consonant after a short stressed vowel)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)