Appraiser

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /əˈpɹeɪz.ə(ɹ)/

Definitions

1. A person who conducts evaluations to determine the worth of assets, property, or items for various financial reasons
2. An individual who assesses and estimates the monetary worth of assets or items, often for legal or financial purposes
3. Someone who examines property or belongings to determine their market value for transactions or insurance

Etymology: The word is a straightforward formation: "appraise" plus the agent suffix "-er", meaning one who appraises. "Appraise" came into English from Old French "aprisier", itself built on the Latin "ad" and "pretium", "price", so the core idea is putting a price on something. The noun ending traces back through Old French "-ier" and Latin "-arius", a suffix that marked a person connected with a particular task, and it passed into English as "-er" in the Middle English period. What makes the word interesting is how closely it tracks its root: an appraiser is literally someone who sets a price, and the trade still does exactly that, from valuing houses for mortgages to estimating the worth of art or jewellery. Its Latin ancestor "pretium" also gave English "price" and "precious", so the appraiser shares a family with words that were never about valuation in a formal sense.

Synonyms: valuator, evaluator, assessor, judge, expert

Antonyms: buyer, seller, novice, amateur, layman