Where does “dressmaker” come from?
Dressmaker comes from Middle English dress combined with maker, derived from the agent suffix -er, which traces through Old French -er and Latin -āre (infinitive ending) to Latin regō, meaning to direct or rule.
dressmaker (English): A person who makes tailor-made women's clothes
Definitions
- A person who makes tailor-made women's clothes
Ancestry of “dressmaker”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|
| 1 | English | dress | To fit out with the necessary clothing; to... |
| 2 | English | -ing | Used to form gerunds, a type of verbal nouns,... |
| 3 | Old English | -ing | Forming nouns from verbs, indicating action,... |
| 4 | Old English | -tūn | — |
| 5 | Old English | tūn | enclosure, yard; place; dwelling |
| 6 | Proto-West Germanic | tūn | fence |
| 7 | Proto-Germanic | tūną | fence; enclosure |
| 8 | Gaulish | dunum | fort; hill, hillfort |
| 9 | Proto-Celtic | dūnom | stronghold, rampart |
| 10 | Proto-Indo-European | dʰewh₂- | smoke; mist, haze |
Words derived from “dressmaker”