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Etymology and origin of the English word reviewer

Confidence
Established
Formation
Derivation
First attested
1611 Florio, Queen Anna's New World of Words
Ultimate origins
Middle French reveueEnglish -er
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
English review
English reviewer

Etymology

It is formed from English review + -er, from the verb.[1][2][3][4] The verb comes from the noun review, partly after Middle French revoir (“to see again”),[1] and Etymonline explains it as re- added to view.[2] The noun is reveue, the feminine past participle of the French verb, compare Latin revideō (“to see again”).[1][2] The OED compares the earlier reviser.[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person who revises a book or text: 1611, in Florio's Queen Anna's New World of Words.[1][3] The sense is now obsolete or rare.[3][1][5]

Semantic evolution

The sense "a person who looks back on a period or event" appeared in 1642 and is also rare now.[1][5] The usual sense, a writer of reviews, began in 1651 with the author of a pamphlet criticizing another work;[1][3] Etymonline dates it to the 1650s.[2] Webster (1828) defined a reviewer as one who critically examines a new publication.[6] A wider sense, a person who evaluates or assesses something with a view to changing it, appears in American use in 1826,[1] and the reviewer of a scientific paper in peer review from 1975.[1]

Timeline

  • 1611 – a reviser of a text (now rare).[1]
  • 1642 – a person who looks back on events (now rare).[1]
  • 1651 – a writer of reviews of books, plays and the like.[1][5]
  • 1826 – a person who evaluates or assesses something.[1]
  • 1975 – a person who carries out a peer review.[1]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A person who writes reviews of books, films, plays, products or the like; a critic: The reviewer praised the novel's ending.[5][1][7]
  2. A person who examines or assesses something, often to decide whether it should be changed.[1][5]
  3. A scholar who assesses work submitted for publication in peer review.[1]
  4. (obsolete) A reviser.[5][3][1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  2. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ Webster, Noah (1828), An American Dictionary of the English Language, New York: S. Converse
  7. ^ The Chambers Dictionary (2014), 13th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers
Cite this entry

“Reviewer.” Etymologically, 31 Oct. 2026, etymologically.com/en/reviewer. Accessed 31 Oct. 2026.

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