Other forms: riders
A rider is somebody who rides a horse, a bicycle or a motorcycle. A good rider, the rider fell, a rider in the race.
The word covers all of them and the context decides. In law and business a rider is an additional clause attached to a document: a rider to the contract, a rider to the resolution. In show business, the rider is the list of requirements an artist attaches to a performance contract, which is where the famous stories about dressing-room demands come from. Note free rider, an economic term for somebody who benefits without contributing.
1nounriderSomebody who rides a horse or a bike.
“The rider was fine and the bicycle was not.”
2nounadditionalAn additional clause attached to a document.
“There is a rider to the contract that nobody read.”
rider is somebody who rides, or an added clause.
Old English ridere is ride plus -er, and it meant a knight — somebody who rode was by definition mounted and armed. The legal sense comes from a clause that rides along on an existing document.
Old English
rīdere — rider, knight
Middle English
ryder
English, today
rider
From Middle English ryder, ridere, from Late Old English rīdere (“rider, knight”). Compare Dutch rijder, German Reiter. by surface analysis, en + ride + -er.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Word Building