Other forms: readers
A reader is somebody who reads. A keen reader, our readers, a slow reader.
In publishing, the readers are the audience — write for your reader — and a reader is also a person employed to assess manuscripts. A reader is a book of collected extracts used in teaching: a course reader. In British universities, Reader is an academic rank between senior lecturer and professor. Note e-reader, meaning the device; lip-reader; mind-reader; and proofreader, which is one word.
1nounnounSomebody who reads.
“She has been a serious reader since about the age of six.”
2nounreaderA book of collected pieces for study.
“The course reader is about six hundred pages of photocopies.”
reader is somebody who reads, or a collection.
Old English raedere comes from raedan, to read — which originally meant to advise, guess or interpret. The sense of reading letters grew out of interpreting them, and the older meaning survives in rede and in the German raten, to advise.
Proto-West Germanic
*rādāri
Old English
rēdere
Middle English
reder
English, today
reader
Built from
From Middle English reder, redar, redere, redare, from Old English rēdere, rǣdere (“a reader; scholar; diviner”), from Proto-West Germanic rādāri, equivalent to read + -er. Cognate with stq Räider (“advisor”), Dutch rader (“advisor”), German Rater (“advisor”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA