Other forms: bakers
A baker is somebody who makes bread and cakes for a living. The baker on the corner, a baker's dozen, the baker starts at four in the morning.
In British English the shop is the baker's, with the apostrophe and no shop after it — go to the baker's — which is the same pattern as the butcher's and the chemist's. Bakery is the newer and now commoner word for the shop, and it also means the place where the baking happens. Note baker's dozen, thirteen, from the extra loaf bakers added so as not to be fined for short weight, and that Baker is a very common English surname for exactly the reason you would expect.
1nounbakerSomebody whose job is making bread and cakes.
“The baker had sold out by nine.”
2nounshopA shop where bread is made and sold.
“There is a baker at the end of the parade.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
baker is a trade.
Old English baecere is bake plus the -er that makes a doer — the same pattern as writer and singer. It is one of the oldest occupational nouns in English and one of the most productive surnames, alongside Smith, Miller and Taylor.
Proto-Germanic
*bakārijaz — baker
Old English
bæcere — baker
Middle English
bakere
English, today
baker
Middle English bakere, from Old English bæcere (“baker”), from Proto-Germanic bakārijaz (“baker”), equivalent to bake + -er. Cognate with Dutch bakker (“baker”), German Bäcker (“baker”), Norwegian Bokmål baker (“baker”), Swedish bagare (“baker”), Icelandic bakari (“baker”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA