Dryer

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈdɹaɪɚ/

Definitions

1. A device powered by electricity that eliminates moisture from washed laundry through the application of heat and airflow
2. An appliance that uses heated air to dry wet clothes and textiles quickly after being washed
3. An appliance designed to remove water from clothing and textiles using warmth and air movement ; a tool that extracts moisture from the environment or materials to reduce dampness

Etymology: The word "dryer" is about as transparent as English compounds get: it is simply the verb "dry" with the agent suffix "-er" attached, so it means "one who dries." The suffix came into English through Middle English, where forms such as "driere" and "dreyere" appeared with exactly that sense, long before anyone was drying clothes in a machine. The appliance sense is a much later development. Early uses named people or things that performed the drying, and only once mechanical clothes-drying became practical did the word settle on the machine. Its ancestry runs back through the Old English "dryge" and the much older Germanic and Indo-European stems that also gave us the verb "dry" itself.

Synonyms: drier, clothes dryer, tumble dryer