Other forms: painters
A painter is an artist who works with brushes and colour. A portrait painter, a great painter, painter and decorator.
The word covers the artist and the tradesman without distinction, which is why painter and decorator is the usual trade description. In sailing, a painter is the rope at a boat's bow used to tie it up, which is an entirely separate word. Note paint, from the Latin for painting.
1nounpainterAn artist who works with brushes and colour.
“The painter mixed blue and yellow on her palette to make green.”
2nounropeThe rope at a boat's bow.
“She tied the dinghy's painter to a ring on the harbour wall.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
painter is an artist or a rope.
Old French peintor comes from peindre, to paint, from Latin pingere. Picture and pigment come from the same painting.
Middle English
peyntour
English, today
painter
From Middle English peyntour. Middle English peyntour, from Old French peintor, equivalent to paint + -er.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA