porter
/ˈpɔɹtɚ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.98 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A person who carries luggage and related objects; (historically) one who carried luggage or did manual labour in the transloading of cargo.
noun
An ant having the specialized role of carrying.
Example Sentences
- "goods porter"
- "By the time I reached the train station I was exhausted, but fortunately there was a porter waiting."
- "Achilles! a drayman, a porter, a very camel."
- "the unsmotherable delight of all the porters and by - standers"
- "The man who carries your luggage at the station is a "red cap", not a porter. The Canadian porter is the man who makes up the beds in the sleeping cars."
- "As soon as we had come to a stand in Kamina Station, a swarm of porters pushed their way into the compartment to get my luggage. I selected one, and ordered the others out, and then detrained."
Etymology
From Middle English porter, portere, portier, borrowed from Anglo-Norman portour and Old French porteor, from Late Latin portātor, from past participle of Latin portāre (“to carry”). By surface analysis, port (“to carry”) + -er.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈpɔɹtɚ/
- British English: /ˈpɔːtə/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in People.
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
rope porter
groom-porter
hall porter
light porter
tackle-porter
ticket-porter
County of Porter
Crater Porter